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See p. 1 6. 


The 

Little Women Club 


BY 

MARION AMES TAGGART 

It 


With Illustrations by 
EVA V. NAGEL 


PHILADELPHIA 

HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY 


LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

NOV 20 1905 

Copyrisfht Entry 

y. / 9 (y 

CLAS^ cx XXC. No. 

/ j.3^1 r? 

COPY B. 


Copyriglit, 1905, 

E}’ Hexry Ai.temus 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

CHAPTER I 

Mildred Has an Idea D 

CHAPTER II 

The Little Women Find Laurie 22 

CHAPTER HI 

Meeting Apollyon 35 

CHAPTER IV 

'I'liE Shadow of a Coming Event 50 

CHAPTER V 

The “ Engel-kinder ” and the Glimpse of the 

Robber GO 

CHAPTER VI 

The Little Women Pass the Lions . ‘ . 84 

CHAPTER VII 

The Mvbogjameeths Discover Grandfather Law- 
rence 102 

CHAPTER VHI 

Mildred Guesses the Secret . ii8 

CHAPTER IX 

The Bad Effect of Good News 132 

CHAPTER X 

“Jo Makes Peace” 145 

CHAPTER XI 

The Mybogjameeth Club is Reorganized . . . 159 

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; 4 . 




THE LITTLE WOMEN CLUB 


CHAPTER I 

MILDRED HAS AN IDEA 

T he four M’s were living up — or down 
— to their initial letter and were mop- 
ing. It rained so hard that it seemed to 
rain all ways at once ; the street was full of 
great puddles from which the downpour 
sent up again spattering showers, while the 
wind blew sheets of wet around corners, 
filling the space crosswise between the ris- 
ing and falling rain. The elm-trees dripped 
still more moisture from their slender 
leaves, hanging disconsolate, and the swol- 
len buds of the rose-bushes, just ready to 
burst forth if the sun would but come out 
to encourage them, hung their heavy heads, 
or rested them on the top rail of the fence 
as if they ached from the dampness. 
Madge Bonner said that she ‘‘didn’t see 


The Little Women Club 


liow they ever could bloom after such a 
soaking, but if they did she was certain 
sure they would come out water-lilies in- 
stead of roses. The four M’s had not 
reached the time of life in which weather 
affected them directly — only as it cut off 
pleasures — for the sum total of all their 
ages added up equalled but forty-eight 
years, and when you divide forty-eight by 
four it doesn’t leave many years apiece 
for each of the four. 

Such a storm as this heavy June ‘‘sou’- 
easter” struck a fatal blow to all hope of 
having fun, and this was why the four 
;M ’s sat moping in the premature dusk. 

Madge Bonner, Molly Fuller, and May 
Leland had come over in rubbers and mack- 
intoshes to share the dulness with Mildred 
Houghton, the youngest and most delicate 
member of the quartette. Madge Bonner 
was a handsome, dark-eyed girl of thirteen, 
who might appropriately have been called 
“Madge Wildfire,” for there was nothing 
that she dared not attempt, and little that 
she could not do — unless it was to keep 
still. 

May Leland was twelve; she was a 
slender creature, white of skin and golden- 
[ 10 ] 


The Little A\^omeii Club 


haired, who would have been pretty but 
for the lack of force in her face. Molly 
Fuller was twelve also. She was rounded 
at every point; absolutely devoid of angles, 
either physical or mental. Molly was a 
most comfortable child!’’ her grandmother 
said, and so she was — comforting, too. 
She was not pretty; her nose tilted up- 
ward, her cheeks were too round, besides 
she had a way of collecting freckles that 
was the despair of her mother. But her 
steady blue eyes were very kind and hon- 
est, and the girls said truly that if ^‘you 
wanted to scrap you had to do it alone, as 
far as Molly was concerned, for there was 
no quarrelling with her.” 

Mildred Houghton was but eleven, yet 
she was in many ways the oldest of the 
four. An only child, and a delicate one, 
besides being decidedly talented, Mildred 
spent so much time over books, and read 
such grown-up ones, that her three friends 
regarded her with awe, and fell meekly 
into line under her leadership with uncon- 
scious deference to her superiority. A 
little creature was Mildred, with big gray 
eyes looking out from her pale face with 
too much intensity on a world that should 
[ 11 ] 


The Little Women Club 


be regarded humorously; fine dark-brown 
hair, so full of electricity it never would 
stay in place; and a mouth that was too 
quick to quiver at the sight of suffering, or 
at a harsh word. 

Madge sat with her elbows on her knees, 
supporting her chin in her hands, between 
which she looked gloomily forth upon the 
gloomy world. 

May reclined gracefully on the piano- 
stool, her golden curls drooping prettily 
over the shining rosewood, for it never 
could be so dull and stormy that May 
would not be picturesque. 

Molly sat comfortably cuddling Queen 
Bess, a discriminating Maltese lady, with 
white breast and paws, who did not like 
strangers, but who knew that steady Molly 
could be trusted never to do anything dis- 
turbing to sensitive nerves. 

Mildred was curled up in a big chair, its 
high sides so inclosing her slender little 
form that it gave her somewhat the effect 
of a transplanted jack-in-the-pulpit. 

‘^Oh, ivJiy doesn’t it stop raining?” 
groaned Madge impatiently. ‘‘There isn’t 
one single thing to do in the house, and 


[ 12 ] 


The Little Women Club 


1 Ve tliought of heaps and piles of things 
to do outdoors/’ 

‘ ‘ I would play my waltz for you if you ’d 
like to dance,” said May sweetly. She had 
learned one waltz, and delighted even more 
in the feeling of elegant accomplishment it 
gave her to play it for the others to dance, 
occasionally tossing her curls backward, 
than to dance herself, though May was as 
graceful as a flower. 

Dance!” echoed Madge, the contempt 
of one passed beyond mundane consola- 
tions in her voice. 

don’t believe we could see to keep 
from bumping into the furniture,” said 
Molly with a contented laugh. ‘^Mildred, 
tell us a story — ^make it up, you know, as 
you go along.” 

’ve been having a secret for a long 
time,” said Mildred slowly, disregarding 
Molly’s pacific suggestion. didn’t 
mean to tell you yet, but I suppose I could. 
It would be so interesting to talk about it, 
we wouldn’t mind the rain.” 

‘‘Well, I like that!” exclaimed Madge, 
flinging herself backward, and sitting 
upright in her chair with such a sudden 
motion that Queen Bess jumped, and re- 

[ 13 ] 


The Little A\"omeii Club 

marked ^^P-r-r-tT’ inquiringly. cer- 
tainly do like that! Who ’s the secret with, 
Mildred Houghton, and why haven’t you 
told us?” 

‘^Just with her; with Mildred Hougli- 
ton,” said Mildred, laughing. Don’t fly 
into little bits, Madge ! It ’s a plan I had, 
and I meant to tell you as soon as I could, 
but I was n’t quite ready. Still, I ’ve a 
great mind to tell you now, because it is so 
stupid sitting here like chickens, waiting 
for it to stop raining.” 

‘ ‘ A great mind to tell ! Why, you ’ll have 
to tell, now you ’ve told so much,” cried 
Madge, while Molly laughed at Mildred’s 
comparison — Molly thought Mildred said 
‘ ^ the funniest things I ’ ’ 

^ ^ Do you think it would be nice for us to 
be ^Little Women’?” asked Mildred. 

‘‘How could we help ourselves? We 
couldn’t be anything else,” said literal 
May. 

“0 dear! you don’t suppose I mean 
just being girls !” sighed Mildred, who, be- 
ing a compact little budget of imagination 
herself, found her companions painfully de- 
ficient in that faculty — indeed, it was 
largely because they rarely knew precisely 
‘[ 14 ] 


The Little AVomeii Club 

what she meant that Mildred had her own 
way with them. 

‘‘What I mean is, play ‘Little Women.’ 
I thought we might have a post-office — in 
our garden, or somewhere — and write let- 
ters to one another, only instead of being 
ourselves, we ’d be Meg, Jo, Beth, and 
Amy, and we ’d write to one another under 
those names, and play we were the March 
girls. And it would be something like a 
club, and something like being in the story, 
and — and oh! it would be lots of things, 
and just as exciting and lovely as it could 
be, I think. ’ ’ 

“Mildred, you are a darling!” cried 
Madge, jumping up to hug her friend, and 
causing Queen Bess this time to scuttle 
under the sofa. Not that it mattered, be- 
cause Molly jumped up too with an ecstatic 
little shriek, and even May, the proper, up- 
set the piano-stool in her haste to join the 
ovation to Mildred’s inventive genius. 

“It ’s the very nicest, loveliest plan I 
ever heard of!” cried Madge, dancing 
about like a whirlwind. 

“It ’s going to be perfectly de-li-cious ! ” 
cried May, while Molly added with an air 
of settling all doubt on the question for- 

[ 15 ] 


The Little Women Club 


ever: always did say that Mildred was 

a real, genuine genius.” 

‘‘Tell us some more,” said Madge as 
they quieted down again, not in their for- 
mer positions, but hovering on the arms of 
Mildred ^s chair very much as the Marches 
hovered around their mother when she was 
reading them their father’s letter. 

“If we get a box,” said Mildred, “we 
can have it parted off into little divisions, 
just like a real post-office, and each one 
of us would have a box — ^we ’d number 
them, of course. And once a day we ’d 
distribute the mail, but there ’d be another 
box to mail things in with a slit in the top.” 

“Could n’t we mail things if they had n’t 
a slit in the top, Mildred?” asked Madge 
slyly; the girls dearly liked to catch Mil- 
dred tripping. 

Mildred did not deign to notice the in- 
terruption. “You know,” she continued 
with slightly heightened color, “that they 
had a post-office in ‘Little Women,’ and 
that ’s what made me think of it first. 
Then I thought it would be just perfectly 
lovely to play we were the Marches, and 
ours was that very post-office, and never 
call ourselves by our own names once, and 
[ 16 ] 


The Little Women Club 


try to remember that we live in Concord, 
and are very poor, but awfully good and 
clever — ^just be Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy all 
the time except when we were in school or 
some one was around. Even then we ’d go 
on pretending inside, though we might have 
to call one another by the names everybodv 
knows. ’ ’ 

‘Mt would be a secret, wouldn’t it!” 
asked Molly. 

‘^Oh, of course,” said Mildred, as if no 
reasonable person could raise a doubt on 
that head. 

There wouldn’t be much fun in it if 
it weren’t,” said May. 

‘^Why, Molly, how silly you are! when 
we ’ve been trying so long to get a secret 
from the rest at school too!” said Madge 
reproachfully. 

should think we ought to have 
badges, ’ ’ said May, always with a keen eye 
toward the decorative. 

‘‘Yes, and a name,” said Molly. 

The problem of the name proved a 
stumbling-block in the way of organization, 
so far going on so smoothly. One after 
another was suggested and rejected, til] 
Madge had an inspiration. 

2 — The Little Women Club. [ 17 ] 


The Little Women Club 

^^Let ’s take ail the letters in the four 
names, Meg, Jo-, Beth, Amy, cut them out, 
and mix them up like the game of Logom- 
achy, and see if we can’t make one great 
long word that has them all in it. No one 
on earth could know what it meant, and 
the girls at school would simply be crazy. ’ ’ 

Mildred literally tumbled out of her chair 
at this brilliant suggestion, for she had a 
bad habit of sitting on her foot, and she 
jumped up so quickly to get pencil and 
paper that her heel caught in the hem of 
her skirt and sent her headlong. 

However, she was used to that particu- 
lar accident, and did not mind, and in a 
moment twelve long, scraggly letters, re- 
vealing much nervous haste on the part of 
their makers, were lying on the table — - 
M-E-G-J-O-B-E-T-H-A-M-Y. 

Forty eager fingers began shifting them 
about, and it was but a few minutes before 
a cry of triumph announced the evolution 
of the remarkable word ^^Mybogjameeth.” 

'‘Do you suppose any one could pro- 
nounce it?” asked Molly, admiring but 
doubtful. 

"Wait! I ’ll ask Mamma what she thinks 
it is, and how she could call it,” said Mil- 
[ 18 ] 


The Little Women Club 


dred, rushing away with the paper on 
which she had scrawled it. 

^‘It looks like Hebrew, gone mad,’’ said 
Mrs. Houghton as she studied the new 
linguistic creation. ‘^Pronounce it? Well, 
I should call it My-bog-ja-meeth, but I am 
sure I may be mistaken. What does it 
mean, and where did you find it, Mildred!” 

‘^We made it up. It is the name of our 
new club,” said- Mildred, flying off to join 
her waiting friends, delighted with the 
sound of the hodgepodge word as her 
mother had pronounced it. 

*Hf that does n’t settle Clara Dean, with 
her old X. Y. Z. Club, then I ’m mistaken, ’ ’ 
said May, with the calm joy of a great 
conqueror. ^‘Now what shall the badge 
be!” 

‘H am sure I don’t know,” said Mildred 
^^We never could get a badge so glori 
ously magnificent as that name is!” 

have thought of something,” sai(^ 
May, smiling with the anticipation of mak- 
ing a literary suggestion — ^that sort usually 
coming from Mildred ‘Won know ^Little 
Women’ was published in Holland, and 
there it was called ^ Under Mother’s 
Wings. ’ Why could n ’t we take a pair of 
[ 19 ] 


The Little Women Club 


wings for our badge? I ’d paint them on a 
button, and we ’d wear them with ribbon 
streamers. ’ ^ 

‘^The button and the ribbon is well 
enough, but I don’t like wings much,” said 
Madge. 

‘ ^ Then the only thing is to think of some- 
thing else,” said practical Molly. 

This proved impossible, and at last Mil- 
dred settled the matter by remembering 
that Mercury wore wings, and that he was 
the messenger and appropriate to post-of- 
fice arrangements. In honor of Mercury 
and the Dutch edition of Little Women” 
she voted to adopt wings as the club’s de- 
vice, and May’s suggestion was accepted. 
It was a great relief to have such an im- 
portant question settled; it was not the 
first time that Mildred’s vast — or what 
seemed like vast — learning had solved dif- 
ficulties for them all. 

‘Mt is time to go home, girls, if we want 
to have any tea,” said Madge, starting up 
as the clock struck six. 

They hastily bundled themselves up in 
the waterproof garments, which seemed al- 
most superfluous, so sunny had the new 
plan made the night appear. 

[ 20 ] 


The Little Women Club 


Her guests kissed Mildred good-night 
with new fervor, in gratitude for the bril- 
liant suggestion she had offered them. 

On the steps they turned back. ^ ^ Good- 
night,’’ they cried. ‘‘Mybogjameeth!” 
And were gone. 


[211 


CHAPTER II 


THE LITTLE WOMEN FIND LAURIE 

HE Houghton’s door-bell rang with the 



1 thrice repeated ring by which the 
four M’s announced their visits to one an- 
other. It was so early in the morning fol- 
lowing the establishment of the new club 
that Mildred had not finished her breakfast, 
although she had made all possible haste to 
get through and go to find the other three 
members, to tell them of the defect in their 
plan which she had discovered, and suggest 
its remedy. 

‘^It ’s Miss Madge and Miss Molly,” an- 
nounced Ellen, the waitress, and Mildred 
hastily took her last mouthful of biscuit 
and her last swallow of water, and hurried 
into the library with the suspicion of a 
crumb in the corner of her lips, and — 
must it be confessed? — a surreptitious 
dart of the tongue to remove it. 

‘‘We Ve just rushed over here.” “Mil- 
dred, do you know what we forgot ? ” “ Oh, 


[ 22 ] 


The Little Women Club 


girls, I was hurrying so to see you before 
school!’’ cried all three children at pre- 
cisely the same moment as Mildred pushed 
aside the portiere. 

‘‘It ’s Miss Phoebe!” said Madge, an- 
swering the question she had herself 
asked. 

“I know; that ’s what I was going to 
tell you,” said Mildred. “After you had all 
gone it came across me like a flash that we 
had left out Miss Phoebe. I was so shocked ! 
How do you suppose we could have done 
it?” 

“We were all so excited,” said Molly, 
so placidly that the word seemed absurd in 
connection with her. “I don’t think it was 
so very strange. What shall we do ? Make 
her an honorary member?” 

“I guess so, if that means trying to 
honor her,” said Mildred, reluctant to be 
obliged to betray her deficiency in parlia- 
mentary knowledge. 

‘ ‘ Oh, my no ! ” cried Madge, delighted to 
discover that lack. “Don’t you know? 
Tom belongs to clubs, and he told me. It 
means — ^well, of course it does mean honor- 
ing her, but — oh, an honorary member is 
some one you get into the club because you 

[ 33 ] 


The Little Women Club 


think they ’re so nice, or great, or some- 
thing, and they don’t do any work, or take 
much part; they jnst belong.” 

‘‘It is nice to have a big brother to tell 
you things,” said Mildred wistfully, de- 
siring to imply delicately the reason for 
her being less well informed than Madge. 
“But that wouldn’t do at all. Miss 
Phoebe would have to take part just as 
much as the rest of us. I thought she could 
be Laurie.” 

Mildred’s friends looked at her a mo- 
ment, then Molly gave a gasp of pleasure. 

“Now wouldn’t you think we ’d have 
seen that?” she said. “Yet we never once 
thought of it ! Of course she could be 
Laurie, and it would be almost the very 
best thing about the whole plan.” 

“I must say I think it ’s stupider not to 
have thought of that than to have forgot- 
ten Miss Phoebe in the first place,” added 
Madge. “Now I see the club wouldn’t 
have been any good without a Laurie. ’ ’ 

“Nor without Miss Phoebe,” said Mil- 
dred decidedly. “Wait till I get my hat, 
and then we ’ll go tell May. This after- 
noon, after school, we ’ll go see Miss 
Phoebe in a body.” 


[ 24 ] 


The Little Women Club 


Miss Phoebe was a planet, and the four 
M’s her faithful and adoring satellites; 
Miss Phoebe was a queen, and the four 
M’s at once her slaves and her ladies-m- 
waiting; Miss Phoebe was a big girl, and 
the four M ’s little ones, and in saying that 
one has reached the climax of expression 
of devotion, surpassing all metaphors. 

Phoebe Akers was Miss Phoebe’s whole 
name. She was nineteen years old — six 
years older than Madge, the oldest of the 
M’s, and that is an immense difference 
when one is in no danger of forgetting in 
which presidential campaign an event hap- 
pened, because one can remember but two. 
She was a very pretty girl with big brown 
eyes, beautiful bright reddish-brown hair, 
and the whitest and fairest of complex- 
ions. But, better than that, she was one 
of those girls for whom all who know them 
are daily grateful; who actually deserve 
the praise of the old saying, and are ‘‘as 
good as they are pretty.” 

In all her short life — for nineteen years 
are not many to those who are past child- 
hood — sweet little Miss Phoebe had hardly 
thought of herself ; she did not have time 
to think of herself, for one thing. 

[ 25 ] 


The Little Women Club 


Her mother had been twice widowed. 
Phoebe was Phoebe Akers, but her mother 
was Mrs. Tennant, a delicate creature, des- 
titute of that power to make something of 
the most unpromising conditions, which 
Yankees call ‘Haculty.’’ Phoebe’s father^ 
who had married when much too young 
and against his father’s wishes, had 
left his girl-widow nothing, because he had 
nothing of his own to leave. Mr. Tennant 
had left a small life insurance which as- 
sured his widow and Phoebe a home, and 
something toward its support, but the rest 
of their income was earned by brave little 
Phoebe, who cheerily shouldered the task 
when she was but fifteen years old. 

They had come to Branscombe — the 
pleasant New England town where the 
M ’s lived — when Mr. Tennant died. There 
Mrs. Tennant found a charming old-fash- 
ioned house with a beautiful old-time box- 
bordered garden, which was within her 
means, and in it she and Phoebe estab- 
lished themselves, and little Phoebe be- 
gan teaching the music which filled her 
mind and heart, and seemed to flow spon- 
taneously from her ten delicate finger-tips. 

Mrs. Tennant shrank from acquaint- 
[ 26 ] 


The Little Women Club 


ances, but every one knew and loved her 
blithe little daughter, and she naver lacked 
pupils. People were as glad to have their 
children with her in the hope that they 
might absorb some of her loveliness of 
nature, as to have them learn her skill in 
making the poorest piano speak, or her 
power of sending her sweet voice straight 
to open the hardest hearts in song. 

The four M’s had known from the very 
first moment that they set their eight 
brightening eyes upon Miss Phoebe’s bon- 
nie face, and listened to her wooing voice, 
that there never could be any other girl to 
compare with her. This was six years ago, 
and though they had industriously grown 
older, they could not — in that particular — 
grow wiser; for time only confirmed their 
childish judgment, and still to them Miss 
Phoebe was ‘‘the sweetest thing!” 

She was their companion, young enough 
to be a playmate, old enough to be their 
superior. Without her no joy was com- 
plete, with her no sorrow hopeless. 
Each in her way loved the older girl de- 
votedly, but Mildred, following the neces- 
sities of a nature which made her do and 
feel everything in the superlative degree, 

[ 27 ] 


The Little Women Club 


loved Miss Phoebe with an intensity of 
feeling that was almost painful. She could 
never rush to her, and hug her tempestu- 
ously, as the others did; she wondered in 
her heart how they could handle Miss 
Phoebe so recklessly. But she would slyly 
touch the hem of her garments, and stroke 
the folds of her skirt, and watch her with 
eyes that could always say more than her 
lips, and though she feared that Miss 
Phoebe would misunderstand the love that 
could not find as fluent outlet as the others ’ 
love. Miss Phoebe did not misunderstand. 

When school was over the four M^s 
started post-haste to find their beloved 
Miss Phoebe and unfold to her the bril- 
liant prospect which lay before them all 
of enriching their summer with a new and 
delightful game. 

The suppressed excitement, kept down 
with difficulty through the long day of les- 
sons, with a world washed perfect by the 
heavy rain beckoning them forth to the 
countless joys of June, burst all bounds 
when they were free to abandon them- 
selves to it. 

They made record speed to the little 
white house among its big trees which was 

[ 38 ] 


The Little Women Club 


their idoLs shrine, and nearly fell over 
one another in their eagerness to get open 
the gate, which stuck after the storm. 

^‘Phoebe is in the garden,’’ said Mrs. 
Tennant in response to their chorused de- 
mand for her daughter, and the girls raced 
through the hall, out on the rear piazza 
running the width of the house, and saw 
little Miss Phoebe bending down among 
her pansies, and carefully lifting up the 
pretty flower-faces washed down and mud- 
died by the rain. ^‘How much you look 
like them ! ’ ’ cried Mildred, struck by a re- 
semblance between the face Miss Phoebe 
raised smiling toward them, and the flow- 
ers. Mildred never could help being a 
poet, even under the most absorbing cir- 
cumstances. ‘Mt ’s queer I never saw it 
before.” 

‘Won dear little goose!” laughed Miss 
Phoebe, kissing Mildred first of the four. 

‘^We ’ve come to tell you — ” ‘‘Will you 
join the club? — ” “We ’ve got the very 
loveliest plan!” cried Madge, Molly, and 
May at once. 

“Yes, Miss Phoebe,” exclaimed Mildred, 
catching fire at once, recalled from spirit- 


[ 29 ] 


The Little Women Club 


ual resemblances. ‘^Will yon be Lanrief 
It ’s the Mybogjameeth.’^ 

‘‘It ’s the cried Miss Phoebe, 

dropping down on a garden bench, and cov- 
ering her ears with both hands. “What in 
the name of all that’s wonderful did you 
say then, Mildred ? How can I understand 
if you all talk at once, like four of the four 
and twenty blackbirds? But I don’t care 
what it is! I’ll be it, or do it, if it’s 
something nice.” 

“It ’s too nice for words !” cried Madge, 
while May hugged Miss Phoebe, and 
Molly hopped wildly about on one foot, 
holding the other by the ankle. 

“Is that the reason why Mildred said 
something that didn’t sound like any 
word?” asked Miss Phoebe. “Do tell me 
what you said, Mildred, and do sit down, 
all of you, and take ten breaths — apiece, 
I mean.” 

The four M’s acted upon her suggestion, 
and after a time Miss Phoebe arrived at 
some understanding of the plan laid before 
her. 

“Wliy, it ’s really splendid!” cried Miss 
Phoebe when she had grasped it. “And 
are you going to let me be in the club ? ’ ’ 

[ 30 ] 


The Little Women Club 


‘‘It wouldn’t be much good if .you 
weren’t!” said Madge affectionately. 
“We want you to be Laurie.” 

“I am afraid I am not equal to being 
‘Teddy dear,’ but I ’ll do my best,” said 
Miss Phoebe. “We shall all have to study 
up our ‘Little Women,’ to be perfect in our 
parts.” 

“Why, no, we won’t, Miss Phoebe,” 
cried May. “I know it backwards and 
forwards myself, and so do Madge and 
Molly. As to Mildred — why I almost 
think if you showed her a punctuation- 
mark out of ‘Little Women’ she could tell 
you what came after it I ” 

“Well, that certainly is knowing a 
book!” laughed Miss Phoebe. “To tell 
the truth, I think I could finish up nearly 
any quotation from it myself. Where will 
the post-office be?” 

‘‘We thought Mildred’s garden was the 
best place, because it runs straight 
through to the next street, and it cuts off a 
good deal for May to come that way. Will 
you like it there?” said Molly. 

“I? I like it anywhere,” said Miss 
Phoebe. “But, yes; I think Mildred’s is 
the best place.” 


[ 31 ] 


The Little Women Club 


There ought to be a second box for 
parcels ; you know the March girls got lots 
of things besides letters — especially from 
Laurie/’ she added. 

‘‘There was Meg’s glove, you know; 
that came back through the post-office. 
Only one ; the other Mr. Brooke kept in his 
pocket. We haven’t any Mr. Brooke. 
Do you think we must play the lovering 
part?” asked Molly anxiously. 

“No, indeed,” Madge replied emphatic- 
ally. “We ’ll do the first half of ‘Little 
Women’ most. I hated to have Meg 
marry, and spoil all the fun at home, any- 
way.-” 

“But that glove was in the first part of 
the book,” said Mildred. 

“That’s so; what a nuisance! Oh, 
well; we can’t do everything — ^we haven’t 
any old Mr. Lawrence, nor Aunt March, 
nor Chester cousins, nor lots of things! 
And whoever is Meg won’t go away to 
‘Vanity Fair’ for a visit, and be made over 
into a doll baby in a blue silk, borrowed 
dress, like the real Meg,” said Madge. 
“But we must have the newspaper, and 
the acting, and we can wear one glove, and 
carry the other, like Meg and Jo, and paint 

[ 32 ] 


The Little Women Club 


our old hats, and do all those things. 
What I ’d like to know is which of our 
mothers will be Marmee ! ’ ’ 

‘‘I tliink Mamma would like to have me 
help about the house, the way the Marches 
did,’^ said Molly, with a sigh, conscien- 
tious, but reluctant. 

‘‘My mother could be Marmee,’’ said 
May. 

“Mine could too, for that matter,” said 
Madge. 

“Mine is really very much like her in 
being so lovely, only she doesn’t look like 
her ; Mamma is younger, and I think she is 
prettier than Mrs. March,” said Mildred. 

“Mamma is most like her of all,” said 
Molly. “Don’t you think Mrs. March was 
rather stout!” 

“Your mother isn’t lovelier than mine, 
Mildred Houghton,” said Madge, brist- 
ling her feathers. 

“All mothers are perfectly lovely to 
their daughters, I hope,” interposed Miss 
Phoebe. “/ think, as long as our mothers 
are not going to be in the club, nor play 
with us, it would be better if we didn’t 
choose one for Marmee, but each of you, 
when you ’re at home, can imagine your 

3 — The Little Women Club. [ 33 ] 


The Little AYomen Club 


mother is she — because, of course, you will 
keep up the play in your minds, though you 
can’t speak of it because it is a secret. 
And when we are together we will not have 
any special Marmee, but imagine her al- 
together. Is n ’t that best ? ’ ’ 

‘^Yes, that is best,” said Mildred, 
ashamed of the approach to heat in the 
discussion. 

‘^When is the first meeting, and how are 
you going to distribute the characters?” 
asked Miss Phoebe, noting a slight embar- 
rassment, and wishing to relieve it. 

But her amiable intention miscarried. 
The small line that always appeared be- 
tween Mildred’s eyes when she was 
troubled, showed itself. 

‘‘We haven’t decided; we haven’t been 
able to agree yet,” she said. “But we 
are going to meet to-morrow, at half past 
three, in my garden, to talk about it. Can 
you come. Miss Phoebe?” 

“Not quite so early; I ’ll be there a little 
late. It really does not matter about 
names,” said Miss Phoebe, but Mildred 
shook her head as they bade Miss Phoebe 
good-by. 


[ 34 ] 


CHAPTER in 


MEETING APOLLYON 

M atthew, the Houghton’s old Scotch 
gardener, who had been with them 
so long that Mildred’s baby-carriage had 
marred the beanty of his freshly swept 
paths when he first entered their service — 
old Matthew made the post-office for the 
Mybogjameeth Clnb. 

It was a marvel of neatness ; its only de- 
fect being that as five divisions were re- 
quired now that there was a Laurie in the 
club, Matthew had been obliged to make an 
extra one, or else have two larger than the 
other three. The unused box insisted on 
its superfluous presence a trifle unpleas- 
antly, but after all, it was a minor defect, 
and later the girls were obliged to admit it 
as a new proof of the impossibility of fore- 
seeing what is best; for the sixth box 
turned out to be the most important one of 
all, with transforming effect upon the life 
of the club’s dearest member. 

[ 35 ] 


The Little Women Club 


The four JVLs assembled at their meeting- 
place in the big garden promptly at half 
past three, nor was their punctuality to- 
ward one another especially meritorious, 
since they assembled in a body, walking to 
the meeting-place from school, two by two, 
their arms around one another’s waists. 

Where shall we fasten the box?” asked 
Madge, when the raptures over Matthew’s 
work, especially the beautifully painted 
numbers on the boxes, had been exhausted. 

^Mn the big lilac-bush,” said Molly 
promptly. ^^The branches are so thick 
they will half hide it, and we can reach it 
easily. ’ ’ 

looked it up in ‘Little Women,’ and 
it says their post-office was a fine, spacious 
building — it was an old martin-house — 
with padlocks on the doors, and the roof 
made to open. And it was set up in the 
hedge in the lower corner of the garden. 
Now is n’t it a shame that we have n’t any 
hedge, but a fence at the lower end of the 
garden, and that it is too near the back 
street to be safe anyway?” said Mildred, 
looking troubled. 

“What of it?” said May. “We can’t 
have everything just like the book.” 

[ 36 ] 


The Little Women Club 


^^We ought to be just as near like the 
real ‘Little Women’ as we can be, I say,” 
said Mildred. “If we don’t feel like them, 
we won’t act like them, and then it will all 
be horrid. I want to be so sure I ’m Jo — 
so sure of my part — that I can’t once slip 
into Mildred. ’ ’ 

And Mildred’s color came over the mis- 
take that she had made while voicing the 
feelings of a true artist. 

“You want to be so sure you ’re Jo!” 
exclaimed Madge. “Why, we haven’t de- 
cided which we should each be ! I ’m the 
only one that ’s the least, wee bit like Jo.” 

“I could play Jo better than any other 
character, because I like her best,” re- 
marked May. 

“We all like her best,” said Molly. 

“I don’t think I could be any one else,” 
said Mildred, with the finality of tone her 
friends sometimes found trying. 

“I should like to know why not?” de- 
manded Madge with spirit. “You ’re lit- 
tle, and I ’m tall ; you ’re quiet, and I ’m 
fly-away; you never for a moment wanted 
to be a boy, and I ’m just sick to think I ’ve 
got to be a girl seventy years or so! You 
can’t whistle good, and I can; you can’t 

[ 37 ] 


The Little Women Club 


climb worth a cent, and I can get to the 
top of any tree in this garden; you can’t 
run without getting pains in your side, and 
you know my long legs win every race in 
school, and they all want me on their side 
in prisoners’ base, or those games. I ’m 
just like Jo, but you ’re no more like her 
than your Queen Bess is!” 

Madge poured out her list of compara- 
tive merits without giving any one else a 
chance to interrupt her, but when she 
ceased speaking May and Molly uttered 
their protest in one breath; Mildred was 
too disturbed to speak. 

‘^And if Mildred is little and quiet, and 
couldn’t be Jo, that ’s no reason why I 
shouldn’t be,” said May. 

don’t see why I could n’t play Jo just 
as well as you, Madge,” said Molly. 

^Wou ’re not either of you one speck 
like Jo,” said Madge. ‘'Could they be Jo, 
Mildred?” 

“I don’t see how they could,” said Mil- 
dred in a husky voice. “I think May 
ought to be Amy. She can draw, she has 
the yellow curls, she likes to be finnified, 
and then there ’s her name! Amy was 
just May turned around; Miss Alcott’s 

[ 38 ] 


The Little Women Club 

sister May was the real Amy, you know. 
I think May is such a perfect Amy that she 
ought to love to play her.’’ 

‘‘Nobody likes Amy; you would n’t want 
to be Amy yourself,” retorted May 
sulkily. 

“Yes, we do; we like Amy very much — 
in the second part. May,” said Molly ear- 
nestly. ‘ ‘ After she grew up so pretty and 
fine-ladyfied we all like her. You be Amy; 
and let me be Jo, girls.” 

“You never, never could play Jo, 
Molly,” said Mildred. “Don’t you think 
it ’s selfish to want the very best part for 
yourself!” 

“I ’d like to know if you don’t want it!” 
inquired Molly with more spirit than her 
friends had ever seen in her before. “If 
you weren’t selfish, you’d want me to 
have it.” 

There was so much truth, as well as 
shock, in this- statement from gentle Molly 
that Mildred was silenced, but Madge said : 
“Well, I don’t see what Mildred wants to 
spoil everything for by trying to do what 
she can’t, but as to you, Molly, it would be 
even worse. You ’re a born Beth. You 
like eats — ” 


[ 39 ] 


The Little Women Club 


‘‘So does Mildred/’ interrupted Molly. 

“Well, so do I, but that doesn’t mat- 
ter,” said Madge with beautiful inconse- 
quence. “You hate fusses — or you usual- 
ly do — and you ’re good at dusting, and 
helping, and all that. And then you look so 
much like her! Don’t you remember how 
round and rosy she was in the first part, 
before she was sick?” 

“Would I have to go into consumption 
and die, if I played Beth?” asked Molly, 
beginning to yield, but dismayed at this 
tragic prospect. 

“My goodness! no, of course not!” 
cried Madge. “We aren’t going to play 
everything; haven’t we said so? I say, 
stick to the first part, and leave out all the 
second.” 

“Then I don’t mind being Beth,” said 
Molly slowly. “I believe I ’d rather like 
to be Beth, now I think of it. ’ ’ 

“Thank goodness; that ’s one part set- 
tled!” sighed Madge. “Now, May, be 
Amy ! It just suits you, truly. I could n’t 
be Amy to save my life, and Mildred would 
be much nicer as Meg. Amy was ‘ a regu- 
lar snow maiden,’ don’t you remember? 
Now, you ’re the only one who ’s that. It 

[ 40 ] 


The Little Women Club 


will be loads of fun to go around putting 
on airs, and curling your hair, and using 
French words all wrong, and doing all 
those things ! It ’s the nicest part, next to 
Jo, honest !” 

Mildred did not speak; she stood with 
her eyes cast down, her pale little face 
whiter than usual. May, too, looked for- 
bidding, as she kicked at a tuft of grass 
with her dainty French kid-tipped toe. 

^^Just look at your little shoes!” con- 
tinued Madge, growing artful in her desire 
to attain her end. ^^None of us ever has 
such dandified little things as you have, 
and just imagine Jo March with feet like 
that! Here ’s my foot,” and Madge 
thrust out a well-grown foot, in a sturdy 
shoe. ‘‘Then, as Mildred said, you can 
draw, and you know how Amy sat in her 
bower, and drew with her curls becoming- 
ly tied with a blue ribbon! Her sisters 
called her little Kaphael, the book says. 
Then you can dance better than any of us, 
and are more graceful — oh, come, be Amy, 
Mav; it does suit you so!” 

‘‘Well, all right; I’ll be Amy,’’ said 
May, looking up with a sudden clearing of 
her frowning brow. “I don’t care much 

[ 41 ] 


The Little Women Club 


anyway, and I gness it will be a nice part. ’ ’ 

‘^Good for you!’’ cried Madge heartily, 
adding under her breath: ‘‘I thought I 
could manage her! Now, Mildred, there 
are only you and I left. Won’t you be 
Meg?” 

Mildred shook her head. She hated to 
appear obstinate, and she did wish that she 
might be obliging, but it seemed to her that 
if she were not Jo there would be nothing 
left on earth to live for, so intensely did 
she feel the character of her favorite little 
woman, and yearned to impersonate it. 

Madge looked at her as though she 
longed to shake her. ‘Won are the most 
awful girl if you get anything into your 
head!” she said vindictively. Don’t you 
see that I ought to be Jo? Haven’t I 
shown you why I ought to be Jo? Just as 
much as Molly and May ought to be Beth 
and Amy, ’ ’ she added, hoping the example 
of her friends would move Mildred. 

^Mt isn’t only because I want to play 
Jo, Madge,” said poor Mildred, her lips 
quivering at being called a ‘‘most awful 
girl.” “It ’s because I just can’t be any- 
thing else. I have thought about Jo, and 
played I was Jo all alone, until I could n’t 
[ 42 ] 


The Little Women Club 


— truly I could n’t — ^be one of the others.” 

‘‘Well, if that ’s any reason for being so 
mean and selfish ! ’ ’ said Madge, losing her 
temper completely over a statement that 
had no weight or meaning for her. “If I 
were as mean as you are I wouldn’t call 
myself my friend!” which dreadful re- 
mark, though ambiguously phrased, con- 
veyed only too clearly its meaning to suf- 
fering Mildred. 

She turned away to hide the tears which 
sprang to her eyes as Madge spoke, but the 
tempestuous sobs which burst forth in a 
moment made the movement futile. 

“0 Madge, don’t talk like that!” said 
Molly, distressed, and already assuming 
her role of ‘ ‘ Beth the peacemaker. ” “ Mil- 
dred isn’t mean and selfish; we all know 
that. She just wants to be Jo ; that ’s 
all.” 

“And so do I want to be Jo, and I Ve 
just as much right to be it as she has,” 
said Madge, turning angrily on Mildred’s 
defender. “And so did you want to be Jo, 
and so did May, but you both gave it up, 
and saw you were more like Beth and 
Amy. But Mildred won’t give up one 
bit!” 


[ 43 ] 


The Little Women Club 


Neither will Madge/ ^ said Molly slyly. 
‘‘Jo was the clever one, and Mildred is the 
cleverest of us.’^ 

“Never mind, Molly; let ’s give up the 
whole thing,’’ moaned Mildred. “I don’t 
want the post-office in my garden. It 
wouldn’t be any fun playing now, no mat- 
ter which was Jo — it ’s all spoiled!” 
And Mildred bowed her face into her 
hands and cried despairingly. 

Just at this critical moment a pretty 
voice yodelling floated down through the 
garden, and Miss Phoebe appeared, her 
bright face wreathed in smiles, which in- 
stantly vanished as her eyes travelled from 
Mildred’s tragically bowed figure, to Mol- 
ly’s distressed face, to May’s disgusted ex- 
pression, and Madge’s darkly frowning 
brow and crimson cheeks. 

“What is the matter?” she asked dis- 
mayed. 

“We ’re mad,” said Madge laconically, 
ashamed at being caught in such a temper 
by Miss Phoebe, yet standing to her guns. 

“They ’re going to give up playing ‘Lit- 
tle Women,’ ” said Molly sadly. 

“But why? What’s wrong?” asked 
Miss Phoebe. 


[ 44 ] 


The Little Women Club 


^^Oli, because Madge and Mildred are 
such a pair of sillies ! They both want to 
be Jo/’ said May in profound disgust. 

‘‘Don’t cry so, Mildred dear,” said Miss 
Phoebe, drawing the sobbing child close to 
her. 

Mildred never could cry comfortably, 
but went into such tempests of weeping 
that they were often followed by two or 
three days of illness. 

“Now I ’ll be Court, and you are both 
to show cause why you should be Jo. I 
want you to promise to abide by my deci- 
sion, and abide by it happily. It would be 
rather mean to invite me to be Laurie, and 
then leave me without any little women. 
And very silly to give up such a fine game, 
and a club with such a name as the Mybog- 
jameeth, just for a trifle! Now' Madge, 
why do you want to be Jo ? ” 

“Because I want to, most of all, I sup- 
pose,” said Madge honestly, her wrath 
abating under the charm of Miss Phoebe’s 
sunny manner. “But I am best for it be- 
cause I ’m tall, and thin, and boyish, and, 
daring, and all that.” 

“And you, Mildred? MTiat is your 
claim?” the pretty “Court” continued 

[ 45 ] 


The Little Women Club 


‘^Because I can’t play anything else, 
no matter how I try, nor how willing I 
am,” said Mildred tremulously, and with 
a faint hope that Miss Phoebe would un- 
derstand a feeling that she could not her- 
self explain. ‘Mf I could possibly play 
Meg, I would, for I can’t bear spats. But 
I ought to be Jo, because she wrote, and 
I ’m the only one of us who can be one bit 
like her in that, or edit the paper, or write 
verses, or anything. And Madge is just 
the same name as Meg, and Madge is the 
oldest — ” Mildred broke off unable to con- 
tinue. 

‘‘Madge, what could you do, if you 
played Jo, and you had to edit the paper?” 
asked Miss Phoebe, anxious to establish 
Mildred in her favorite part, not because 
she loved her more than Madge, but be- 
cause she did understand that she was the 
only one to whom it would matter longer 
than for the passing hour. 

“I couldn’t do it,” said Madge 
solemnly. 

“Then I think you ought to be Meg, be- 
cause Jo ’s writing was much more the im- 
portant part of her character than her hoy- 
denish ways. And you really are the old- 

[ 46 ] 


The Little Women Club 


est of the four, and pretty Meg was the 
oldest, as Mildred says. It is a lovely part, 
dear. I would rather be such a sweet, 
housewifely little woman as Meg, than be 
the cleverest creature in the world, unless 
she had heart too,” said Miss Phoebe, put- 
ting out her other arm to inclose Madge. 

Madge smiled. ^‘All right; I give in,” 
she said. ‘‘Battle is off, Mildred — 
you ’re Jo.” 

“That ’s my fine Madge!” said Miss 
Phoebe heartily, kissing both girls. 
“Look up, Mildred; the trouble is past!” 

But Mildred could not smile yet. “I 
hope Madge won’t be unhappy about it,” 
she whispered. 

“Unhappy! Of course I won’t!” 
laughed Madge, whose temper, though 
quick and strong, left no scars to mark its 
track. “I don’t care one bit now — Miss 
Phoebe makes things right.” 

“It is all settled, and you must neither 
think nor speak of it again,” declared 
Miss Phoebe. “I brought the ribbons to 
wear with the badges when May — ^no, Amy 
— paints them. Green for Meg, crimson 
for Jo, violet for Beth, and blue for Amy — 
like the covers of the little books which 

[ 47 ] 


The Little Women Club 


they found under their pillows that first 
Christmas morning — ^you remember T’ 

Is n’t that nice?” murmured Molly 
with profound satisfaction at Miss 
Phoebe’s bringing them into touch with 
their assumed characters’ preferences 
from the start. 

‘‘And you have embroidered each one!” 
cried May admiringly. 

“Yes, with that wonderful word, ‘My- 
bogjameeth,’ ” laughed Miss Phoebe. 

Mildred looked up with a faint smile; 
her hands were cold, and she trembled 
under Miss Phoebe’s clasp. “I wonder 
what will become of this dear little bundle 
of nerves!” thought the older girl pity- 
ingly. 

But she said : ‘ ‘ Let ’s go down street and 
have some ice-cream in honor of the 
Mybogjameeth Club, which is now fully es- 
tablished, having held its first meeting. 
Laurie invites you. ’ ’ 

The club accepted enthusiastically, and 
Mildred went for her hat, which she had 
left in the house. “Go with her, Madge; 
I am sure she won’t be happy till she has 
spoken to you alone,” said Miss Phoebe. 

Madge obeyed, wondering. When Mil- 
148 ] 


The Little Women Club 

dred heard her coming she turned back and 
met her in the doorway. 

^‘1 am so sorr}^ I was nasty, Madge,’’ 
she whispered. “I feel dreadfully to 
think I was mean to you. Please forgive 
me.” 

^‘Why, you did n’t do anything but hold 
out, and you had as much right to do that 
as I had,” said Madge, kissing the swollen 
and pathetic little face heartily. ^^You ’re 
the one to forgive. I said horrid things 
to you, but you know I never mean things, 
don’t you, Mildred!” 

wouldn’t blame you if you did,” 
said Mildred from the depth of her contri- 
tion and exhaustion. But she came back 
to Miss Phoebe looking far brighter, and 
Miss Phoebe saw with pleasure that the 
storm was past. 

‘Wou ’ve been playing the eighth chap- 
ter of ^Little Women’ this very after- 
noon,” said Miss Phoebe, trying to ac- 
commodate all four girls with only the two 
arms which nature had given her and upon 
which they were all trying to hang. 

Which is that!” asked Madge. 

‘‘Jo meets Apollyon,” laughed Miss 
Phoebe, with a sly glance. 

4 — The Little IVotnen Club. [ 49 ] 


CHAPTER IV 


THE SHADOW OF A COMING EVENT 

T he Mybogjameeth Club, having es- 
caped its first imminent danger of 
shipwreck, went on its triumphant way, 
with increasing enthusiasm in its members. 

Madge was the first postmistress — they 
had agreed to serve in rotation, a week at 
a time — as a compensation for her disap- 
pointment in the matter of her role; and 
her office was by no means a sinecure. 

Twenty letters daily were dropped into 
the mailing-box, placed by the postmis- 
tress in the individual boxes, and then im- 
mediately taken out again by her for dis- 
tribution. 

Each member wrote at least once a day 
to each of the others, and as to packages, 
the original post-office established by 
Laurie in the March’s hedge could not 
have transmitted more peculiar gifts than 
its double was found to hold every day. 
Madge and May revelled in the new 

[ 50 ] 



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[ 51 ] 








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The Little Women Club 

game as much as either of the others, but 
took more lightly the obligation of follow- 
ing their beloved book in detail; an obli- 
gation which weighed heavily on the other 
two. Mildred was so inspired by her part 
that it is doubtful whether she could have 
said positively which was the real girl, 
Mildred Houghton or Jo March, if she had 
been asked the question suddenly. She 
assumed boyish ways — or what she consid- 
ered such ; whistled as she ran with spirit 
that partly made up for the uncertain and 
quavering quality of her notes ; insisted on 
wearing her hair in two braids, regretting 
that its extreme fineness made the braids 
less heavy than were Jo’s. She said 
‘‘Christopher Columbus!” carefully when 
anything surprised her or went amiss, and 
— ^last realistic touch of all — got her 
mother to make her a black woolen pina- 
fore and a cap of the same material, sur- 
mounted with a “cheerful red bow,” like 
Jo’s, in which to write if the fit overtook 
her. She removed all the little stories and 
verses kept so carefully in her pretty little 
desk, to a sheet-tin baking-pan, covered by 
another, which had been discarded from 
the kitchen because they leaked, and which 

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were the nearest approach Mildred could 
make to the ^‘tin kitchen’’ in which the 
real Jo kept her papers. 

Molly in a different spirit carried out 
her part no less faithfully than Mildred 
did hers. She was so conscientious that, 
having undertaken to play Beth, she set 
about it with exemplary thoroughness. 
She began to practice with such ardor that 
her mother was uncertain whether to be 
pleased or alarmed at the sudden change; 
lacking the key to the enigma in not know- 
ing that it was not Molly, who despised 
practising, but musical Beth sitting at the 
piano. Molly even found a battered doll 
which had once been youthful, pretty, and 
her own, and reinstated it in her care as 
^‘old Joanna”; she also afflicted her soul 
by setting up a canary-bird called ^^Pip,” 
whose tragic end through one of her 
‘Mamily of cats” — which, like Beth, she 
already possessed — ^was her hourly appre- 
hension. 

The badges, and the unpronounceable 
name especially, had caused the sensation 
in school which the four M’s proudly anti- 
cipated. Envy and baffled inquisitiveness 
called forth much derision of both, but the 

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M’s were deeply enough versed in the 
schoolgirl form of human nature to recog- 
nize its cause — had indeed been them- 
selves too deeply annoyed by other girls’ 
secrets to fail to understand — and took the 
ridicule as a tribute to their genius, bear- 
ing themselves^ haughtily through its at- 
tacks. 

During the first ten days of the new 
club’s existence the post-office took up so 
much time and thought that there was no 
chance to carry out any other phase of the 
lives of the girls in ‘‘Little Women.” At 
the end of that time school had closed, and 
— though no one would admit it — the task 
of letter-writing had lost something of its 
charm. 

It was a real affliction to Madge and 
May that Mildred and Molly insisted on 
the necessity of reading Bunyan because 
the “Little Women” had been so devoted 
to “Pilgrim’s Progress.” 

“I can’t and I won’t read that book,” 
declared Madge at last. “I don’t like it 
the very least bit, and May does n’t 
either.” 

‘ ‘ I think it is so queer to have characters 
like ‘Money,’ and ‘Hope,’ and ‘Piety,’ and 

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such things,’’ said May, looking ashamed 
of sentiments which she felt were not cred- 
itable to her literary taste. ‘ ‘ It is not like 
a fairy story, and it ’s not like anything 
else.” 

^Mt ’s an allego ly,” said Mildred. ‘Mt 
means all the good and bad feelings and 
people that we meet on our way to heaven, 
and it shows how careful we have to he 
which ones we make friends with.” 

don’t believe you can like it yourself, 
Mil — Jo, only you hate to say so,” said 
Madge. 

Well, I think it is nice and funny where 
Mercy says she might have been married, 
hut she had n’t ever spoken of it, and that 
none of the people she did n’t marry ever 
found fault with her person; because that 
shows that Mercy really did think she was 
pretty,” said Mildred, her eyes laughing 
at the remembrance. And I just love the 
part where Mr. Valiant-for-Truth is called 
into the Celestial City — and all those last 
pages. And especially that lovely, lovely, 
lovely line that sounds — sounds like all the 
angels, and a rush of wings : ^ So he passed 
over, and all the trumpets sounded for him 
on the other side.’ ” Mildred’s eyes di- 

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lated till they were almost black, and her 
lips parted as if she had been running as 
she repeated the wonderful line, full of the 
simplicity of its greatness. 

There was silence for a moment; the 
girls felt vaguely uncomfortable when this 
mood came upon Mildred. 

Madge was the first to rally. ‘‘Suppose 
we go up the Westerly Hill to-morrow 
afternoon,” she said, “and do that chapter 
where the girls play they climb the Delec- 
table Mountain, and tell their plans for 
what they mean to do when they grow 
up?” 

“Laurie can’t come,” said Molly 
quickly. 

“What a shame! Still, the book says 
the girls went there often, so we ’ll pre- 
tend it is one of those days before Laurie 
followed them and joined The Busy Bee 
Society.” 

“We must take work then, and wear big 
hats, and carry a bag on our shoulders, 
pretending we are pilgrims as they did,” 
said Mildred. “Meg sews, Beth sorts 
cones, Amy sketches, and Jo knits.” 

“All right,” said May cheerfully, find- 


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ing her task agreeable, while Madge made 
a wry face over hers. 

The Westerly Hill was as pretty as its 
name suggested. It was a gentle ascent, 
not to a great height, and from its top a 
beautiful stretch of country could be seen 
on every side ; softly undulating meadows, 
white now with daisies, green with the per- 
fect foliage of June. Here and there a 
farmhouse glimmered white among the 
trees, and occasionally wreaths of collected 
smoke indicated a town. On the horizon 
hung low the purpling mass of heavy va- 
por which drew the children’s eyes more 
frequently than the beauty to which they 
were accustomed, for it was the smoke and 
steam of the great city to which they went 
seldom, and which fascinated them with its 
splendidly vast possibilities. 

The second edition of ^‘Little Women” 
climbed the hill together on the following 
day, when the sun made the ascent quite 
long enough. ‘^Meg” dutifully carried a 
cushion, ‘‘Jo” a book, “Beth” the basket, 
and “Amy” the sketch-book required by 
the text. 

“Let ’s put off telling our plans till 
some day when Miss Phoebe can come,” 

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said Madge. ^Mt will be more like the book 
to have Laurie here, and I am dying to tell 
you something dreadful — or I guess it ’s 
dreadful — interesting anyway. ’ ’ 

‘‘What is it, Madge? asked May eager- 
ly. “Yes, let ’s wait for Miss Phoebe to do 
that chapter. ’ ’ 

Mildred groaned. “Names, names, 
names ! ’ ’ she cried. ‘ ‘ Girls, why can ’t you 
remember ? ^ ’ 

“Jo,’’ began Madge obediently, “have 
you heard that the big house is sold!” 

“No, indeed; we usually call Teddy’s 
grandfather’s ‘the big house,’ but you don’t 
mean the Lawrence’s of course,” replied 
Mildred, realistic even under the reception 
of news. “Do you mean the big house on 
our back street, Meg?” 

“Yes, and they say it is going to be 
opened right away, ’ ’ continued Meg. ‘ ‘ But 
that is not the worst of it!” 

“No, because that isn’t even bad,” said 
literal May. 

“There is going to be no one in it but 
one old man!” announced Madge in such 
a sepulchral tone that the harmless words 
produced the horrified thrill she intended 
them to cause. 


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Molly shuddered. ^ Ms n’t that dread- 
ful?” she murmured. 

‘ ‘ How do you know it is ? ” said Mildred, 
annoyed to find that she too felt, unreason- 
ably, that it was. ^‘All old men are not 
dreadful ; I don’t believe we know any very 
dreadful old man, except old ’Lish Dill, 
and it can’t. be he who has taken the house, 
because he is always too tipsy to earn 
money enough to get as tipsy as he would 
like to be, Papa says.” 

’Lish Dill!” exclaimed Madge scorn- 
fully. ‘‘How can you be so silly. Mil- Jo? 
It isn’t his kind of dreadfulness. All I 
know about it is this : Esther — the semp- 
stress, you know — was telling our Ann that 
this old man was going to live there alone, 
with two servants, and that nobody knew 
where he had come from, nor why he had 
come here to live away from his friends — 
supposing he had friends. And Esther said 
— they didn’t know I was hearing, but 
I was in the window, behind the curtains — 
that her ‘steady company’ — I found out 
she meant the young man that she is en- 
gaged to — was on the Branscombe police 
force, and he had told her that they were 
going to keep their eye on this old person, 
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because he was exactly like the pictures of 
that robber who had robbed the hank in 
New Athens just after he got out from 
serving a long term in State Prison for an- 
other robbery. And Esther’s young man 
said — so Esther told Ann — that it would 
be a feather in the cap of our little police 
force if they caught the man whom all the 
big detectives were looking for, and he was 
most sure he was coming right here to 
Branscomhe, and had blown in the money 
he had stolen buying this house. You 
mustn’t mind that slang, M-Amy, because 
I ’m only repeating exactly what Esther 
said her young man said.” 

‘‘Well, isn’t that perfectly horrible!” 
shuddered Molly. “To think of having a 
robber right among us as a neighbor I ’ ’ 

Mildred had turned very pale; to her 
inflammable imagination the tale was prob- 
able because it was so exciting. She felt 
that before them lay danger, if not violent 
death. But May’s prosaic mind saved her 
from fully sharing the others’ alarm. 

“After all,” she said, “it is only what 
Esther’s young man thinks, and everybody 
in Branscomhe knows our police are no 


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good. Very likely the man is some one 
else; not the thief. 

^ ‘ And who else could he he ? ’ ’ demanded 
Madge, who had worked herself up into 
such terror that she could not endure that 
no one should share it, nor that she should 
he deprived of the excitement that was ab- 
sorbing, though painful. ‘^Of course our 
police are geese, hut they may recognize 
a likeness, even if they are not clever. And 
it is n’t only Esther’s young man — it is all 
the rest of them. And it is a dead secret ; 
you mustn’t breathe a word nor a hint 
to a living soul, because I had no right to 
hear, and if we tell we ’ll keep the police 
from catching the thief and getting the 
big reward — of course that ’s what they ’re 
after. Promise you won’t tell any one, no 
matter how scared we get.” 

^We promise,” said all three solemnly, 
deepening their terror in giving the pledge. 

shall never take another moment’s 
peace,” said Mildred. shall not dare be 
out one minute when it begins to get dusk, 
nor go alone into a side street. And I 
shall dream every single night of this hor- 
rible thing that has happened to us. Even 
if he is n’t the robber it won’t be so very 
m 


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much better for us. Oh, here comes Lau- 
rie ^ 

Miss Phoebe came humming up the hill as 
cheerily as if there were no such thing in 
all the world as harm or wrong of any sort. 

Don’t tell even her,” whispered Madge, 
as Mildred went to meet her, trying to 
infuse Jo’s off-hand cordiality into her own 
reticence as she called out the greeting of 
Jo to Laurie: ^Is this my boy?’ ” 

‘As sure as this is my girl,’ ” duly 
retorted Miss Phoebe, who was letter-per- 
fect in her part, and shook hands cordially 
all around, since her role of Laurie forbade 
kissing. “I want to tell you something 
that will be the best part of our play, if 
you will pretend we ’re ourselves for a 
moment,” said Miss Phoebe after she had 
thrown herself down on the grass and 
plucked a few daisies and seed-grass tips, 
which she began to fashion into a bouquet. 
“Do you remember the Hummels?” 

“Tlie poor German family to whom the 
Marches gave their breakfast? Yes, in- 
deed ! ’ ’ cried her hearers. 

“There is a very poor Irish family on 
Bennett Street, and I thought perhaps you 
would like to play tliey were the Hummels, 

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and visit them, and take things to them to 
eat and to wear, as the Marches did to their 
poor family, ’ ’ said Miss Phoebe. ^ ‘ It would 
be doing good to these Dillons, and no 
harm, at least, to you; while it would be 
more like ‘Little Women’ to help others.” 

“Isn’t^hat a fine idea?” cried Madge 
heartily, her generous heart as pleased 
with the suggestion as her fancy was. 

“Let ’s go to-morrow morning,” said 
Mildred with shining eyes. “You all come 
to my house to breakfast, so we can he 
together to give up our breakfast, and to 
take it to the Hummels.” 

“Well, of all invitations!” laughed 
Madge. 

“Do you think it has to be carried out to 
the very letter? Could n’t you eat your own 
breakfast, and take them other food, pre- 
tending that you had not eaten? You know 
the Marches had to give their breakfast 
because they had nothing else to take,” 
said Miss Phoebe, preserving her gravity 
with difficulty. 

“I should say we could!” declared May 
emphatically. 

“And I don’t have to take care of the 
baby if it gets scarlet fever, nor let it die 

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in my lap, do I ? ’ ’ asked Molly, feeling that 
Beth’s virtues might prove too high a 
standard for her to reach. 

‘‘Dear me, no !” said Miss Phoebe, giving 
up her effort at gravity, and laughing like 
a bobolink. 

“I think it would be far nicer to go 
without breakfast,” insisted Mildred dis- 
contentedly, as they shouldered their bur- 
dens, preparatory to returning. 

The suggestion of ministering to the 
Hummels’ substitutes drove the recollec- 
tion of the advent of the awful stranger 
from the girls’ minds for the time, but as 
they neared the foot of the hill it returned 
to them with fresh terror. They shrank 
closely together from the lengthening shad- 
ows cast downward from the hilltop, over 
which the sun had just dropped westerly, 
and quivered at unexpected sounds, al- 
though they knew that whatever the mys- 
terious old man might prove, he had not 
yet arrived in Branscombe. 


5 — The Little Women Club [ 65 ] 


CHAPTER y 


THE ‘ ^ ENGEL-KINDEK, ” AND THE GLIMPSE OP 
THE EOBBER 

B right and early three of the imper- 
sonators of the great Little Wom- 
en” came to join the fourth at breakfast. 
The Houghton’s dining-room had a large 
bow window toward the east, and the table 
looked more than usually alluring with the 
sunlight resting on its spotless damask, 
shining glass and silver, bringing out the 
tints of the strawberries piled in the cut- 
glass bowl at one end of the table, and the 
white and red cherries flanking them at the 
other. 

^‘0 girls, don’t you think that you could 
keep from eating any breakfast?” asked 
Mildred pathetically, with unintentional in- 
hospitality. 

^‘Why, Mildred, I really am ashamed of 
you!” exclaimed her father, laying down 
his paper to look sternly at his daughter. 


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^‘What did you ask your friends here for, 
if not to take breakfast with you? ’’ 

^‘Why, Mildred, my dear, what can you 
mean?’’ added her mother, who knew the 
child well enough to feel sure that her mo- 
tive in making such a remarkable appeal 
was other than appeared. 

‘^They did n’t come to eat, truly. Papa,” 
said Mildred flushing, and unable 'to pre- 
serve the secret of the club, yet defend her- 
self. “But I think they mean to eat, and 
I do so wi^h they would n ’t. ’ ’ 

“I won’t; I don’t mind,” cried Molly 
nobly, moved by Mildred’s unmerited re- 
buke and sympathy with her fidelity in car- 
rying out details. 

“Well, Mildred, I am afraid I do mean 
to eat, for one,” said Madge, laughing. “I 
could n’t go off without a taste of cherries. 

May felt some delicacy in announcing her 
intention to enjoy the good things before 
her, hut there was no mistaking the atfec- 
tion in her eyes as they rested on the straw- 
berries, and the pretty glass pitcher filled 
with cream. 

“I hope there is some apology that you 
can make for your rudeness and inhospital- 
ity, my daughter/’ said Mr. Houghton. He 
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was so fond and proud of his only child 
that he tried hard to guard against spoiling 
her, and was very much afraid of letting 
her errors pass uncorrected. 

‘^It is something that they are imagin- 
ing, I am sure, and fasting is part of the 
game — or action — you see I don^t know 
enough about it to use the right word,’^ 
said Mrs. Houghton. ^Ht is a secret, of 
course — nicest things are always secrets, 
are n’t they, girls? But I am sure it won’t 
matter if you plaj^ you have fasted; you 
can just as well play that as pretend the 
rest of it. And you all will be so tired and 
cross if you go without your breakfast that 
nothing will go right for the whole morn- 
ing 

Don’t you think, Mildred, that you can 
imagine a fast, and take breakfast to please 
me?” 

Mrs. Houghton was young and very 
pretty; she was considered by all the M’s 
as the nicest mother that a girl could have, 
though she had the selection of all the qual- 
ities which make nice mothers to combine 
in one for herself. She always understood 
Mildred’s thoughts before the little girl had 
realized fully that she was thinking, and 
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she entered so completely into her many 
fancies that Mildred never could be quite 
sure whether there were two hearts and 
brains between her mother and herself, or 
just one moving them both. 

Mildred gave Mrs. Houghton a grateful 
glance now, and yielded at once. 

‘H suppose I can imagine a little more,^’ 
she said. ‘Ht is mean to starve the others, 
You shall have an extra big breakfast be- 
cause you were willing to go without any, ’ ’ 
she added, looking toward Molly ; Mildred 
avoided the use of names since the preser- 
vation of the secret prohibited calling the 
girls by those which they had assumed. 

After a much heartier and more luxu- 
rious breakfast than the Marches often en- 
joyed, the new little women sallied forth 
to visit the Irish edition of the German 
Hummels. 

‘ AYe must go through the back streets — • 
they did in ‘Little Women’;’’ said Molly, 
shifting the burden of her small basket to 
carry it more steadily. 

“The robber!” ejaculated May, stopping 
short. 

“That ’s so; we should have to go near 
his house,” cried Madge. 

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^^It doesn’t matter,” said Mildred, with 
the desperate courage of a strong convic- 
tion. ‘‘We must go by the back streets, or 
it won’t be right.” 

As usual, Mildred had her way, and the 
trembling band faced the necessity of pass- 
ing the desperado’s den — figuratively, for 
in reality “the big house” was anything 
hut a den. Not a sign of life appeared as 
they neared it, nor as they crept past in 
silence, except that the butcher’s great 
Newfoundland dog had seated himself 
broadly in the middle of the sidewalk, wait- 
ing for his bold master, presmnably, who 
was delivering meat at the big house. 
Peter — he was named after the town of 
Saint Pierre — ^would scarcely have moved 
if a torchlight procession had been passing, 
and Molly, unseeing in her anxious preoc- 
cupation, tripped over him, and begged his 
pardon as May gave a stifled scream, and 
Madge and Mildred giggled hysterically. 

No worse adventure befell the M’s on 
their way to the Dillon’s, who lived in a 
part of the town so unfamiliar to the girls 
that it was like visiting another place to go 
there. An odor of onions, tobacco, cabbage, 
and suds — ^with, perhaps, too little soap 

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used otherwise — saluted the four visitors- 
as Mrs. Dillon opened the door to them^ 
wiping her red arms on her apron as she 
did so. 

‘‘We have brought something to your 
children/’ said Madge, making herself 
spokesman as the others hesitated. “Miss 
Phoebe Akers thought you would like to 
have us come.” 

“Miss Akers is ut?” exclaimed Mrs. Dil- 
lon, a broad smile overspreading her fea- 
tures. “ ’Tis not the first good turn Miss 
Phoebe has done us! Walk in, please; I 
do be washin’, an’ me place is all every 
way. Tim, turn that chair right side up 
an’ take that line off its legs for the young 
ladies to sit on. An’ you, Ellunteresa, fire 
out them cuttin’s you ’re makin’ on that 
binch, an’ mind your manners.” 

“Have we got to sit on the chair-legs 
or the string?” whispered Madge, the in- 
corrigible, to Mildred, who had been quick 
to catch the fun in the complicated direc- 
tions Mrs. Dillon was giving her second 
son, and who could not check a little laugh,, 
which she hastily covered by inquiring: 
“Is Ellenteresa one name, Mrs. Dillon?” 

“Of course not; Ellen is one and Teresa 
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is another,’’ said Madge quickly, very 
much afraid their hostess would suspect 
Mildred’s honest quer^^ of ironical intent. 

Over in the corner, somewhat withdrawn 
from the confusion and disorder of the rest 
of the small room, sat a little girl about the 
age of the M’s, her pale, thin face betoken- 
ing suffering even to eyes as inexperienced 
as her visitors’. She was ensconced in a 
wooden rocking-chair, a pillow covered 
with chintz which had once been gay- 
colored behind her back. Her thin hands 
had dropped the knitting upon which she 
had been at work as the M’s entered, and a 
crutch leaned against the arm of her chair, 
while a round-eyed baby contentedly 
gnawed at the rubber cap on its foot, as 
he lay on his back surveying the world 
around him over the top of his head. 

Mildred slipped over toward the little 
invalid. ‘‘What a dear baby!” she said. 

^‘That ’s Patsy,” returned the girl in 
the chair. “He ’s the best and quietest 
one we ’ve ever had. He ’s that quiet that 
if you give him the end of me crutch to 
chew he hardly ever asks for more amusin’ 
toys. ’ ’ 

“Are you the oldest?” asked Mildred. 

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I ’m eleven — are you iimcli more than 
that!” 

goin’ on twelve; I ’ll be confirmed 
whin the bishop comes. I ’m gittin’ me 
instruthction along with the rest of the 
class; Sister Aloysia comes here reg’lar 
to teach me. She says I ’m better prepared 
than them who can run about — she ’s awful 
good to me, annyways. I ’ll have a white 
dress, and a veil, and a wreat’ like all of 
tliem — the sister will see to it, and I ’ll be 
carried to the church, and they ’ll help me 
up to the altar.” 

The little cripple’s wan face had flushed 
as she poured out this tale of her hopes 
and prospective joys, which rather bewil- 
dered Mildred, who did not understand 
what the reception of confirmation in 
snowy raiment and on equal terms with the 
other children meant to this little shut-in 
soul. 

‘‘You are lame!” she asked very softly, 
as if she feared the words would hurt if 
they were delivered forcibly. 

“Yes, I ’m awful bad. It ’s hip disease; 
me bone has been pushin’ up at me hip, 
and lamin’ me more and more ever since 
I took the scarlet fever after the fall I had 

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whin I was little like our Johnny yon see 
in the yard, fightin’ with that other little 
lad,^^ said this curious little philosopher 
cheerfully. 

Can’t you be cured!” asked Mildred, 
flushing with s^unpathy, realizing how 
dreadful it was to be ‘‘goin’ on twelve,” 
and growing more and more lame daily. 

Mrs. Dillon turned around, facing Mil- 
dred, and taking the reply from her daugh- 
ter’s lips. 

^ ‘ Sure, she ’s been in the hospital. Miss, 
an’ they worked on her, but it did n’t make 
any difference,” she said. ^‘Mary Marga- 
ret has to be threated by a specialitist — 
so they was tellin’ me. She was cruel bad 
before they worked on her, an’ now she ’s 
not sufferin’ so but she can stan’ ut. She’s 
awful patient, though it ’s her mother 
sayin’ ut. 

thought along back I ’d maybe be able 
to save up enough to sind her down to the 
city for the specialitist to threat her, but 
that hope was inded whin Mr. Dillon tuk 
to the dhrink. He was a fine man, an’ as 
good a husband as a woman cud ask till 
thin. He niver rhaised his hand to wan of 
the childrin but in kindness, whin they was 

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spoilin’ for a whippin’, an’ he would empty 
me tubs, an’ bring me wather fer washin’ 
like a prince, so he would. But the dhrink 
got ’um, an’ now it ’s six months since he 
wint away from home, an’ I don’t know 
where he is at all, at all.” 

Mrs. Dillon’s tears burst forth at this 
climax, and Ellenteresa and the good baby 
wailed in sympathy. The M’s felt quite 
cast down at this recital, though not a little 
puzzled by the new viewpoint of home life 
it incidentally presented to them. 

‘‘Don’t, don’t feel so badly,” said kindly 
Molly, laying her dimpled hand without a 
knuckle in it, on the bony hand, reddened 
by suds. 

“I ’m sure that Mr. Dillon will come 
back, and that the drink won’t have him 
then. Maybe he went away to take the gold 
cure!” added Molly with sudden hope, as 
conversations she had overheard on the 
subject of cures for intemperance recurred 
to her. 

“Hiven bless the child!” exclaimed Mrs. 
Dillon, wiping her eyes, her Irish sense of 
humor making her see the funny side of 
Molly’s suggestion. “Where would he be 
gittin’ the gold it takes for the gold cure? 

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But it ’s not for the likes of you to be bur- 
dened wid a poor woman’s troubles! I ’m 
that obliged to yez for all you ’ve brought 
me that I ’ve not thanked yez half ways 
decent. May ye all have the best in this 
world, an’ crowns of the angels’ givin’ in 
the next! May yez niver know what it is 
to want for food for hearts, nor souls, nor 
bodies — an’ I can’t wish yez betther.” 

Thank you very much,” said Mildred, 
taking this valediction gravely. ^‘We shall 
come again, often, if you will let us, and I 
hope — I don’t know — ^but I hope I can 
think of some way to help Mary Margaret. 
If she would like it I ’ll bring her worsted 
to work on, and games to play alone, and 
I ’ve got heaps and piles of books — I ’ll 
bring those. ’ ’ 

^^God bless the dear child,” said Mrs. 
Dillon very sincerely. ^Mt do be hard to 
see Mary sittin’ there, an’ niver runnin’ 
about, nor able to help me, only in mindin’ 
the baby.” 

‘‘Never mind, Mary Margaret; we are 
coming to entertain you,” said Mildred. 
“Why, isn’t that strange! We are the 
four M’s — that ’s what we are called in 
school, because all our names begin with 

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M, and here are you with two M^s all to 
yourself! We shall have to take you into 
our care, and have you a sort of fifth M 
for the otlier four to make happy/’ 

Mary Margaret looked up with such a 
bright smile that it was evident that the 
process had already begun. ‘‘I ’ll be happy 
to see you, Miss. An’ all of you,” she add- 
ed, including the others in a farewell 
glance. But her eyes rested last and lin- 
gered on Mildred’s slender back. 

‘^They did not call us ^ Engel-kinder, ’ ” 
remarked Mildred thoughtfully, ‘‘but I 
suppose they could not because they 
weren’t Bermans. Otherwise it was very 
much like visiting the Hummels — only I 
never supposed the Hummels’ house had 
so many queer little smells, making one 
big one.” 

The other three M’s laughed, but Mil- 
dred continued gravely, not having intend- 
ed to jest: “We shall have to keep up 
seeing them, and try to help Mary Marga- 
ret somehow. I wonder if we could have a 
fair for her?” 

But this time it was May who had a 
brilliant idea. “Let ’s publish a paper, 
like the Marches, only instead of doing it 

[ 77 ] 


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for fun, as they did, let ’s sell it, and give 
the money to Mary Margaret to go to the 
city and let the specialitist treat her. ’ ’ 

‘^What a fine, what a splendumphant 
idea, Amy!” cried Mildred admiringly. 
‘^Only don’t say ‘specialitist,’ like Mrs. 
Dillon, or people will think you don’t know 
any better.” 

And May discreetly concealed the fact 
that this was indeed the case. 

The four M’s were so engrossed in their 
new interest, and in discussing May’s sug- 
gestion of a way to raise money to help 
the poor little cripple who had so touched 
the heart of each of them, that they did not 
remember the danger supposed to lie in 
wait for them in the hack street until they 
were so far on their way that it took almost 
as much courage to retrace their steps in 
the heat of nearly noon as to press on. 

There was no more indication of the 
presence of a robber, nor of a tenant of 
any sort, in the big house now than there 
had been when they had passed it before ; 
only the trimmed grass and swept paths 
indicated that it was not still the vacant 
house that it had been for nearly all the 
time of the children’s knowledge of it. 

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‘ ^ Who ’s afraid ? ^ ’ demanded Madge, sud- 
denly seized with one of the fits of bravado 
to which she was slightly subject. ^^Let ’s 
go inside the hedge and see if the old man 
is anywhere in sight ! ’ ’ 

‘^Not for the world!” shuddered Molly. 

‘^How silly you are, Mol-Meg!” ex- 
claimed May with her slightly superior air. 

You ’re not afraid, Jo 1” hinted Madge. 
^ Wou are such a tomboy you are n’t afraid 
of anything. If your gentle elder sister is 
not afraid, surely you won’t be !” 

Mildred looked as though that proposi- 
tion were open to discussion, but, rallying 
to the spirit of the part she had so eagerly 
longed to play, she said, with what she in- 
tended for a swagger, ‘^Of course I ’m not 
afraid, Meg. Come on 1 ” and actually led 
the way into the robber’s boundaries. 

Within the dreaded precincts everything 
was as quiet as it appeared from without. 
The four M’s were emboldened to advance 
by degrees a little further, not up the broad 
walk, but circuitously and stealthily from 
tree to tree, Indian fashion, up the lawn, 
keeping a sharp lookout that nothing 
should cut off their retreat. 

There was what had once been a bower 

[ 79 ] 


The Little Women Club 


of arbor vitae on the lawn, but which was 
now a disordered, wigwam sort of affair in 
which no one — no one with a well-regulated 
mind, at least — could care to sit and read. 
As the four Amazons, growing intrepid, 
approached this once romantic spot they 
heard a rustling within it, and an elderly 
man came out from the opening on the 
other side — the robber ! 

He had not yet discovered them, but that 
was no reason for delay. The four inter- 
lopers wheeled like so many tops, each 
emitting a blood-curdling shriek as she did 
so, and ran for their lives toward the en- 
trance which their folly had left too far be- 
hind. 

May tripped and fell; Molly stumbled 
over her, but did not fall. Madge and Mil- 
dred dragged the demoralized child to her 
feet, and then redoubled their efforts to 
make up the seconds thus lost. They heard 
a voice calling: ‘‘Little girls, little girls! 
Come back. Don’t be so afraid.” But 
knowing, from experience gathered from 
stories, that the worst ogres always spoke 
you fair, the M’s redoubled their speed, 
and never paused until they were well up 


[ 80 ] 


The Little Women Club 


the road and away from the den of the 
brigand. 

Then they paused for lack of breath, and 
gazed, panting, at one another. 

^‘Wasn^t that too perfectly dreadful!’’ 
moaned Molly, whose build forbade con- 
tinued running except at the price of ex- 
treme physical discomfort. 

‘ ‘ Such an escape ! I thought I should die 
when I fell. You were angels to pick me 
up,” sighed May. 

Mildred — whose face was speckled like 
a trout’s back from fatigue and excitement 
— felt somewhat ashamed of their panic. 
^^He — looked — ^perfectly respectable,” she 
gasped. 

“But he isn’t! So what does it matter 
how he looks ! ’ ’ demanded Madge, not will- 
ing to consent to a point of view which 
might suggest needless cowardice. 

“I ’d almost rather now he were a rob- 
ber,” said Mildred pensively. “It would 
be such a pity to be rude to an innocent 
man — ^when he called so pleasantly to us to 
stop, too ! ’ ’ 

“Nonsense! Called so pleasantly! Of 
course he did!” said Madge after the fash- 
ion of older people — making scorn do the 

G — The Little IVomen Club. [81] 


The Little Women Club 


duty of more coherent argument. “Oh, 
here comes Miss — Here ^s Laurie, Jo,’’ she 
added, as Miss Phoebe came toward them, 
whistling and waving her hat in the ali- 
as some slight compensation for her daint- 
ily feminine attire. 

“Well, did you see the Dillons?” she 
asked after the usual salutation. 

“Yes, Teddy, and we are so dreadfully — 
very sorry for Mary Margaret,” said Mil- 
dred. 

“Did you say nothing to us about her 
purposely to let us be more sorry for her ? ’ ’ 
asked Molly. 

“And did you send us there so we 
would n’t be so dissatisfied as we get some- 
times when we can’t have everything just 
as we want it?” asked Madge, who sus- 
pected their “Laurie.” 

“So many questions!” laughed Miss 
Phoebe. “Yes, I thought you would find 
patient little Mary Margaret more inter- 
esting if you had never heard of her. And 
yes, again; I thought perhaps it would 
make your lot seem brighter to realize how 
hard that little girl’s is. I know she makes 
me quite ashamed.” 

“You! You are always just a sunbeam, 
[ 82 ] 


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my mother says,’’ said Molly affection- 
ately. 

^'We ’re going to help her, Teddy dear,” 
said Mildred. ‘^Or, we ’re going to try to 
help her.” 

^ ‘ I thought my girls, who are so good to 
a lonely boy like me, would make life pleas- 
anter for the little cripple,” said ^‘Lau- 
rie,” nodding with a satisfied smile. 
”I ’m going up to the house with you, for 
I have some letters to post in the office. ’ ’ 

The four M’s — or rather ‘‘Meg, Jo, 
Beth, and Amy” — grouped themselves 
around their taller friend, and chatted 
gaily all the way up the road. By a tacit 
understanding they said no word of their 
invasion and fright to Miss Phoebe. 


[ 83 ] 


CHAPTER VI 


THE LITTLE WOMEN PASS THE LIONS 

M ildred was thinking hard, aided in 
the effort by Queen Bess, who sat be- 
side her in the deep window-seat washing 
her face, and occasionally rubbing her mal- 
tese cheek against her mistress’s pale one 
in a manner at once condescending and 
coaxing. 

Mildred’s reflections had been called 
forth by a remark made by her father to 
her mother at breakfast, and her mother ’s 
reply. 

As he sent up his cup to be filled a second 
time with coffee Mr. Houghton had said: 
‘‘We really must find time to go to the big 
house this week, my dear; it is too bad to 
leave a new tenant who is, in another 
sense, such an old one, so long without a 
welcome to our town and neighborhood.” 

And Mrs. Houghton, without the least 
shadow of surprise — ^much less any symp- 
tom of being shocked— replied : “Yes, I 

[ 84 ] 


The Little Women Club 


have been feeling ashamed of onr neglect. 
We will try to go by Friday at the latest/’ 

Mildred retired to her favorite seat to 
ponder these two remarks. Evidently her 
father and mother did not regard the 
stranger as a dangerous and disreputable 
character. Did this mean that they were 
ignorant of the suspicions of the Brans- 
combe police as voiced second-hand by Es- 
ther to the Bonner’s Ann, or were they 
intending to disregard the rumor, and go 
to see him in spite of it? And was the 
suspicion groundless, or were the Hough- 
tons deceived? The notion of an intention 
on the part of her mother to reform the 
robber — she was quite good enough to 
want to save a hoary sinner — ^flitted 
through Mildred’s brain, but common 
sense, of which she had plenty, told her 
that her mother would not reform an old 
man by visiting him, and that the only 
reasonable solution of the problem was 
that there was no foundation for the fear 
the girls felt of the stranger ; that his crim- 
inal past and identity with the bank robber 
existed but in the imagination of the ser- 
vants. 

With this conclusion came profound 

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mortification that the four M’s — and much 
more the second ^‘Little Women” — could 
have been so foolish. Still worse, that 
they had invaded the old gentleman’s 
premises, and then had fled like chaff be- 
fore the wind from his presence and reas- 
suring voice. 

There was but one thing to do, and this 
must be done without consultation of their 
elders, as the whole silly affair had been 
unknown to them. The four M’s must set 
about atoning for their folly, and that with- 
out loss of time, disregarding the unpleas- 
ant, not to say terrifying, nature of the 
task. 

Mildred penned three letters, each, ex- 
cept in the matter of the name, the counter- 
part of the other. ^‘Dear Meg,” ran the 
first one, think we have made a mis- 
take about the new tenant in the big house. 
I think he cannot be a robber, nor any kind 
of dangerous old man, because Marmee has 
just said that she and Father must call on 
him before Friday. Marmee would not 
call on a robber, unless he was in prison 
and she took him books and things. You 
will please come to a meeting of the My- 
bogjameeth Club this morning at eleven in 
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the grape-arbor. Your topsyturvy Jo.’’ 

It might seem to an ordinary mind that 
the trouble of writing these notes was su- 
perfluous, since Mildred was postmistress 
that week, and could as well have told the 
girls her news as written it. But there 
are higher necessities than obvious ones, 
and the duty of writing her summons to a 
meeting of the club was plain enough to 
Mildred. 

After the notes had been posted she put 
on her big hat, and went down the street 
for a call on sweet Miss Phoebe until half 
past ten, when the other three M’s would 
come after their mail, and Miss Phoebe 
would go to give a lesson. 

Mildred was quick to see a shadow on 
the face she loved, and to-day she noticed 
at once that Miss Phoebe’s sunny cheerful- 
ness was less blithe and spontaneous than 
usual as she welcomed the smallest of her 
satellites. Mrs. Tennant looked ill and 
worried, and Mildred saw that Miss 
Phoebe made an effort to speak gaily, but 
there was a droop in her voice, as there 
was about the corners of her lips, while a 
tell-tale redness around her eyelids sug- 
gested recent tears. 

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‘‘Let ’s take a little walk before I go to 
teach Bertie Dean the mysteries of scales 
— I never saw a small thumb so unwilling 
to do its part as his is! Can’t you come 
with me, around by the lake, and leave me 
at the Dean’s? It is n’t far for you to go 
home alone.” 

Mildred could always do anything that 
Miss Phoebe desired, or that kept them to- 
gether; she gladly assented to this pleas- 
ant proposition, and Miss Phoebe put on 
lier hat with less interest than usual in its 
angle, kissed her mother good-by, and the 
big and little girl sallied forth. 

“Is there anything wrong this morning, 
Laurie dear?” asked Mildred, snuggling 
closer to Miss Phoebe’s side. 

“What dreadfully sharp eyes!” laughed 
Miss Phoebe, with an effort. “Did you 
spy out my grumpiness so soon, Jo? No 
wonder I ’fess everything to you! I 
might as well, if you are going to find out 
for yourself! I am cross, and discon- 
tented, and dissatisfied — that ’s. all, unless 
you add wicked, for being all these things. 
I think it would do me good to make a short 
call on Mary Margaret myself, and let her 
teach me a lesson or two.” 

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^^What wrong? asked Mildred, in 
what she considered her most Jo-like man- 
ner. It really was delightfully like ‘‘Lit- 
tle Women” to have their “Laurie” out of 
sorts, and confiding in her, and she 
could n’t help liking it, while she was heart- 
ily sorry that Miss Phcebe was unhappy. 

“It is nothing but badness, dear — sheer, 
clear, selfish badness,” said Miss Phoebe 
with withering self-contempt. “I am 
tired of being poor, tired of struggling 
along and counting the cost of every straw- 
berry I buy, and every car fare I pay, and 
then, aftei* all the struggle, of not being 
sure of making both ends meet at the close 
of the year. One can never tell how many 
pupils one will have, nor how soon measles 
or whooping-cough may cut off a whole 
quarter’s salary. Mamma is so weak that 
I can’t bear to fret her, but I don’t feel 
equal to going on alone forever.” 

Mildred’s eyes filled with tears. “It 
must be awful,” she said, wishing dear 
Miss Phoebe’s troubles were less real, and 
more like the first Laurie ’s in being merely 
restlessness and dissatisfaction. “You 
ought not to call yourself names. Any one 
would get tired of all those hard things! 

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Papa says he does n ’t know any man so 
brave and strong-hearted as you are, and 
Mamma — Marmee — says she knows there 
is something nice in store for her ‘con- 
tented little Phcebe-hird’ — that ’s what she 
calls you, you know.’’ 

“I’m not a contented little Phoehe-bird, 
nor brave, to-day,” said Miss Phoebe, 
whisking a tear away which Mildred’s 
tactful praise had brought forth. “It ’s 
a shame to bother such a serious, loving 
little soul as you are with my troubles, but 
vou are such a wise old lady I can’t help 

it.” 

Mildred’s cheeks flushed with the plea- 
sure these words gave her. “Aren’t you 
my Teddy?” she asked shyly. “I would 
rather comfort you than do anything in 
the world. But there is something special 
the matter to-day ; not only those same old 
troubles. ’ ’ 

“That proves you ’re a wise old lady!” 
exclaimed Miss Phoebe, stopping short. 
“To think that you found me out! Well, 
the new, special trouble I ’m ashamed to 
tell even my own Jo, but it did seem like 
the last straw, breaking this particular 
camel, when I got the letter this morning. 

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I ’ill invited to Maine for six weeks, to a 
big hotel where there will be hops and all 
sorts of larks, and the sea and boating and 
battling for daytimes.” 

^‘How splendid!” said Mildred as Miss 
Phoebe paused, trying to stifle the selfish 
pang she felt at the prospect of losing her 
darling for so long. 

‘‘Splendid! Yes, of course! Only I 
can’t go!” said Miss Phoebe. 

‘ ‘ Can ’t go ! Why not ? ’ ’ 

“Couldn’t afford the journey, for one 
thing; no clothes suitable for the place, for 
another. But most of all — if two insur- 
mountable obstacles are not enough — who 
would earn the mone}^ for our rent and to 
provide for Mamma while I was skylark- 
ing over the rocks for six weeks? No, my 
dear Jo; thy Teddy must e ’en remain thy 
Teddy for this summer, like all the pre- 
vious ones, and he ’s a wicked and rebel- 
lious Teddy to be so cross because he 
gets a glimpse of the fun he can’t share, 
like a poor little mouse with his trap-door 
ajar the least, wee crack.” 

Mildred did not recognize her blithe 
Miss Phoebe’s voice in the note of bitter- 
ness heard in this speech. “I am so very, 

[ 91 ] 


The Little Women Club 


very sorry/’ she said sadly. thought 
we should have such a lovely summer, 
playing ^Little Women,’ and post-office, 
and Mybogjameeth Club and all, but I sup- 
pose it makes a difference when you get to 
be nineteen. I suppose you want to do all 
the big girls ’ kinds of things then ! ’ ’ 

suppose you do, and I suppose there 
isn’t any sense in it,” said Miss Phoebe, 
her brow clearing as she caught the pained 
tone in Mildred’s voice, coming from a 
sense of being insufficient. ‘ ‘ The younger 
girls’ kinds of amusement are much nicer. 
Don’t mind, dear; you know I am very 
happy with the Mybogjameeth Club. This 
will all pass over, and I shall be sensible 
again. You know I shouldn’t be Laurie 
if I had not black moods — I never had 
them before, so it must all come from be- 
ing your Teddy! Here is the Dean’s. 
Good-by, Jo. Don’t worry. I ’m all right, 
truly ; when you see me again I shall be as 
merry as a cricket. ’ ’ 

Mildred echoed the good-by warmly, 
but walked on less assured of Miss 
Phoebe’s return to happiness than she 
would have liked to be. ‘Ht really is a 
shame!” she thought, shaking her head 

[ 92 ] 


The Little "V\^omen Club 


gravely over the trials the brave girl whom 
she loved bore so courageously. 

^ ^ I wish some fairy godmother would get 
her a fortune.’’ She fell to dreaming that 
this had actually happened, and by the 
time she reached her own gate Mildred had 
endowed Miss Phoebe with the best of 
earthly joj^s, and had imagined herself into 
serenity of mind, such being the power of 
imagination and its pleasure, not chron- 
icled by Rogers. 

Mildred found the other three club-mem- 
bers awaiting her, and after she had hand- 
ed her own notes to them, and waited 
while they read them, the club adjourned 
to the grape-arbor to consult as to the best 
method of making reparation for the injus- 
tice which they had committed. 

think,” said Mildred, ^‘that we ought 
to go — all four of us — to the big house, 
and call on the old man living there, and 
tell him we are very sorry we trespassed, 
and that we are ashamed of running away, 
and we hope he will forgive us.” 

The club caught its breath collectively. 
”What a bold thing to do!” gasped Molly. 

^‘What do you mean by saying we tres- 
passed?” inquired Mav. thought that 

[ 93 ] 


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was some kiud of sin, and that you could 
only ask God to forgive us trespasses.’^ 

Madge shouted gleefully: '‘Well, for a 
girl that loves long words that is a good 
one, Amy!” 

"It does mean that,” said Mildred po- 
litely, pitying May’s deep flush of mortifi- 
cation. "There must be more than one 
kind of trespass though, because it means 
going into some one ’s place when you ought 
to keep out. I dare go to see him ; are you 
afraid, Meg, Beth, Amy?” 

That was a very embarrassing way of 
putting the question. The others could do 
no less than assent to a proposition made 
by Mildred, the youngest and most nervous 
one of the four. 

"We are not afraid; of course not,” 
said the rest in varying tones of assurance. 

"Let us start promptly at half past 
four,” said Mildred. And once more her 
friends gave a consent, its reluctance con- 
cealed as far as possible. 

Accordingly at half past four the My- 
bogjameeth Club, in spotless whites, and 
blues, and pinks, went down the road on its 
errand of atonement. It turned tremu- 
lously in at the big gate of the big house, 

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The Little Women Club 


and slowly but steadily moved up the long 
path, shaded by huge Norwegian pines. 
There was something sinister in the gloom 
and chill of the giant trees, coming in 
from the glowing sunshine of late June. 

There was an old-time knocker on the 
front door, and the club hesitated which 
should use it, less, it is to be feared, from 
politeness, than from dread of the sound to 
be awakened. ^‘You knock, Meg; you are 
the oldest,” said Mildred, and ^‘Meg” 
knocked. 

The reverberating knocker was quite as 
dreadful as the club had expected it to be, 
and it stood on eight shaking black-stock- 
inged legs waiting the answer. 

An elderly woman opened the door, and 
looked very much surprised at the appari- 
tion before her. ‘^Pray walk in,” she 
said, when Madge, in a quavering voice, 
inquired for ^Hhe gentleman who had 
taken the house.” 

The girls were shown into a high-ceil- 
inged, dark-papered room, into which the 
ancient housekeeper admitted light by 
opening the upper half of white wooden 
inner shutters. 

The club dared not be seated, but stood, 

[ 95 ] 


The Little Women Club 


ea.ch on a medallion of the old-fashioned 
velvet carpet, trembling and cold and des- 
perately tempted to run away in a body. 

But neither Madge nor Mildred was the 
sort to turn their backs on a half-accom- 
plished task, and they kept Molly and May 
to their guns. 

At last the door opened and a stern-look- 
ing, but handsome old man entered, the 
first glance at whom made the girls wonder 
how any one could have suspected him of 
being a rogue, while it made him rather 
more formidable on another count. 

He was an aristocratic old gentleman, 
soldierly in bearing, with the sort of nose 
which seemed to be more in fashion in 
revolutionary times than now — a decided, 
strongly curved nose, warning people not 
to take liberties with its possessor. The 
eyebrows met over keen eyes, and the 
mouth came together in marked curves, 
tightly, above a chin that looked as though 
it might have been carved, but never could 
have grown. 

‘^We came, sir,” said Mildred in a tiny 
voice as the others looked at her to begin, 
^‘because we felt very badly, and ashamed 
to think that we came inside your grounds 

[ 96 ] 


The Little Women Club 

the other day, and then ran away when yon 
called us to stop. We want to beg your 
pardon.” 

^ ‘ It is most cheerfully granted, my dear 
little lady,” said the old gentleman. ‘‘I 
thought you were frightened, and I, in my 
turn, was sorry. If you are in the habit of 
playing about that old arbor, pray continue 
to do so. I should be glad to be on good 
terms with my younger neighbors, pro- 
vided they be not unmannerly boys.” 

^^It is exactly because we were fright- 
ened that we came to-day. Mildred has not 
told you the worst of our trespasses, ’ ’ said 
May, using the word which had struck her 
in a combination of its senses. The other 
three coughed, and pulled madly at her 
skirt; there were times when May was 
moved to a frankness that included all that 
should not be said. Her friends felt sure 
that one of these attacks of candor was 
upon her, and that she would not stop 
until she had told this stately old gentle- 
man that the Branscombe police had taken 
him for a bank robber. To prevent this 
dreadful catastrophe Madge threw herself 
into the breach. ‘^We are the Mybog- 

7 — The Little Women Club. [ 97 ] 


Tlie Little Women Club 

jameetli Club,’’ she said, lifting the edge of 
her badge witli her thumb. 

^Wou are the what club, my dear?” 
said the old gentleman, putting on his eye- 
glasses, and stooping from his great height 
to read the cabalistic-looking word. 

Madge exchanged a glance of triumph 
with Mildred. ^Mt is a secret society, and 
we made up the name,” she said. May 
had caught the hint and subsided. 

^Mt would be advisable for you to work 
on Volapiik,” said their host, smiling. 
^‘Let me show you some curious things 1 
happen to be unpacking in the library 
Will you kindly tell me your names?” he 
added, pausing as he led the way to the ad^ 
joining room. 

‘‘Madge Bonner, Mildred Houghton, 
Molly Fuller, and May Leland,” replied 
Madge. “They call us the four M’s.” 

“Ah, yes ; I see. And my name is Acre, 
William Acre, at your service, young 
ladies, and I trust that we shall become 
friends. I have been in India and China, 
and am but now unpacking my cases of 
purchases made in those lands. I think 
you will like to see them. In the mean- 
time I feel hopeful that my good Judith 

[ 98 ] 


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lias prepared us lemonade, and some of 
the cake for which she is justly famous.’^ 
Thus speaking, Mr. Acre led the way into 
a fine old dining-room, littered with straw, 
the table covered with marvellous trea- 
sures out of the dreamland of the East. 
Not less fascinating to young eyes was the 
large golden cake and small iced ones of 
various tints, and the great cut-glass 
pitcher full of tinkling ice and lemonade 
set on the small teak-wood table at the side. 

The club was soon plunged into a be- 
wildering maze of delight; feasting eyes 
and ears on the treasures, and the stories 
connected with them, which Mr. Acre told 
them, and feasting palates on the delicious 
cake. It had such a pleasant time that 
the call lengthened into more than an hour, 
and Mildred was the first to awaken with a 
start to its unseemly duration, and to the 
danger of wearying the old gentleman, who 
contrived to combine so much friendliness 
with his stern appearance, the ability 
to entertain little girls, with a dignity that 
was alarming until you were used to it. 

am exceedingly obliged to you for 
this visit,” said Mr. Acre, as the four M^s 
arose hastily after Mildred’s discovery of 

[ 99 ] 

©r 


The Little Women Club 


the lateness of the hour. trust that it 
may be soon and often repeated. My 
compliments to your parents, if you 
please ; I hope to meet my neighbors when 
it is convenient to them to call upon me. 
I should be glad if you would accept this 
little reminder of our acquaintance.’’ 

With these words the fine old gentleman 
presented each M with an exquisite little 
Chinese cup and saucer, the value of which 
they were too unversed in China-lore to 
know, but the beauty of which was appar- 
ent to the most ignorant eyes. 

The Mybogjameeth Club went silently 
down the long walk, too dazed with its un- 
expected discoveries to speak until it was 
fairly out in the highway. Here, because 
it was so nearly tea-time, the girls were 
forced to separate, and they bade each 
other good-night, promising to meet early 
in the morning to discuss their adventure 
in all its bearings. 

^ ‘ There ’s only one thing I am certain of 
right now and here, ’ ’ said Madge with her 
accustomed vigor. ‘^He is a perfect old 
darling, and we ’ve got to do something to 
show we know it, and appreciate his kind- 
ness.” 


[ 100 ] 


The Little AVomen Club 


‘^That ’s so.’’ ‘‘AVe certainly have,” 
murmured Alolly and May with conviction. 

”A\^e will all think it over this evening, 
and mail each other a letter in the morning 
saying what we think would be the best 
thing to do,” added Mildred. ^‘Good- 
night, Aieg. Good-night, Amy. Good- 
night, Beth.” 

“Good-night, Jo,” responded three 
voices, and the Mybogjameeths went to- 
ward their various homes to display their 
beautiful gift, and to relate their adven- 
tures. 


[ 101 ] 


CHAPTER VII 


THE MYBOGJAMEETHS DISCOVER GRAND- 
FATHER LAWRENCE 

T he Mybogjameeth Club was founded, 
waxed, and waned a little before 
Marconi’s experiments in wireless telegra- 
phy were perfected. Yet not the best work- 
ing apparatus could have produced greater 
unanimity of thought than the letters from 
the four members to one another revealed 
on the morning after the visit in which 
they had braved the lions, as did the hero- 
ines of their favorite story, and, like them, 
had found ‘Hhe Palace Beautiful.” 

When Mildred distributed the mail, and 
Molly opened her three letters, she imme- 
diately stood on one foot, taking the other 
in her hand, and hopped around wildly — 
this being her customary way of express- 
ing supreme satisfaction. 

‘‘How funny!” exclaimed Madge, as 
she followed the reading of her first note 
with a hasty glance at the other two. 
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^‘We all seem to have thought of exactly 
the same thing!’’ 

^ ‘ That ’s because it is so nice. Shall we 
do it r ’ cried Mildred. 

^^Do you suppose he would like it? He 
might think, we were saucy. He may not 
be the kind to enjoy imaginary games, and 
very likely he never read ‘Little Wo- 
men,’ ” said May. “Still, I had to put it 
down, because there really is no other way 
to be so compelmentary to him.” May 
was admirably adapted to playing Amy, 
for she shared that young person’s diffi- 
culty with long words. 

“Ann sings a song about ‘I give thee 
all, I can no more, though poor the offer- 
ing be,’ ” said Madge gravely. “He 
ought to take it that way. Besides, I am 
’most sure he will be pleased, for though 
he is as dignified as a church-steeple, he 
seemed to see a joke yesterday, and he told 
stories just as well as you could ask.” 

“It is very flattering to be let into a se- 
cret society as an honorary member. It 
is like being given the freedom of the city, 
the way they did in historical times. Pa- 
pa says they couldn’t do much with the 
freedom of a city — unless they put it into 

[ 103 ] 


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the soldiers’ hands — hut that the princes 
and lords, and all those Middle Ages peo- 
ple were as pleased as Punch to have it 
given them — it sounded so well when they 
wrote home to their relations. But you 
never can tell when Papa is talking non- 
sense,” added Mildred, with a sudden per- 
ception that there might he doubt about 
the last remark. ‘^At any rate Mr. Acre 
ought to be flattered if we ask him into the 
Mybogjameeth Club and to be Grandpa 
Lawrence — he wouldn’t have to do a 
thing but let us call him that, if ever we 
saw him alone.” 

‘^We ’ll go this very afternoon, and ask 
him,” said Madge. 

‘‘And there ’s a lovely thing I want to 
get Marmee to let us do to-morrow, so I ’ll 
ask her, and let you know after lunch what 
she says,” added Mildred. “Let ’s meet 
at Molly’s; it ’s nearer.” 

Mildred ran into the house and waylaid 
her mother at the linen-closet, looking 
over her store of sweet-smelling clean 
sheets and pillow-cases. She threw her 
arms around her, enjoying, as it was the 
inclination of one side of her manifold 


[ 104 ] 


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temperament to enjoy, the homeliness of 
the spot and occupation. 

' ‘ Motherdy, I want you to let me have a 
dinner party — all my own, and no bother, ’ ’ 
added Mildred, seeing her mother about to 
protest. ^‘1 would like to tell you about 
it without betraying the secret of the My- 
bogjameeth Club, but I don’t see how I can 
— you wouldn’t understand unless I ex- 
plained the club first. Do you think it 
would be any harm to tell you? It is just 
the same for you and me to know some- 
thing, as it is for me to know it alone — 
isn’t it?” 

‘‘It is to us, daughter mine,” responded 
Mrs. Houghton, with the gratitude that 
she felt anew each time that she received 
fresh proof of her little girl’s oneness 
with herself. “But I don’t know whether 
the other girls would see it that way. You 
must be honorably faithful to the least 
pledge, Mildred.” 

“I ’ll tell them you know — they won’t 
mind. They understand it isn’t with me 
as it is with them; they have brothers or 
sisters to share their mother,” said Mil- 
dred. “We are playing ‘Little Women.’ 
I ’m Jo, Madge ’s Meg, Molly ’s Beth, 

[ 105 ] 


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May ’s Amy, and Miss Phoebe is Laurie. 
We made up ^Mybogjameeth’ out of all 
the letters in the March’s names, mixed 
up. We have the post-office like ‘Little 
Women,’ and we ’re going to have the pa- 
per, and we play pilgrims, and write each 
other, and all the time we never use any 
names but ‘Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy:’ 
Isn’t it a lovely play? I made it up. 
Now I want to have a dinner for the club, 
like the one Jo had which she cooked her- 
self, only — ^maybe — there had better be 
something fit to eat — and I want to have it 
to-morrow. ’ ’ 

“Very well; that is not such an alarm- 
ing request as it might have been — a din- 
ner for you four M’s, and Phoebe,” said 
Mrs. Houghton. 

“And you won’t mind having precisely 
the veiy things Jo had?” insisted Mildred. 

“Not in the least; I ’ll read the chapter 
over, and make a list,” replied her mother. 

“Oh, and I did n’t tell you how we went 
to see the old gentleman in the big house 
yesterday, because we had been silly and 
afraid of him, through something Esther, 
the sempstress, and the Bonner’s Ann 
said. We went into his grounds the other 
[ 106 ] 


The Little Women Club 

day to peek at him, and ran off like ninnies 
when we saw him. So we went to apolo- 
gize, and we like him so much — ^yes, you 
did know we went, and he gave us cups — I 
forgot. But you didn’t know- why we 
went. Well, that ’s why, and now he is so 
nice that we want to ask him to he an hon- 
orary member of the Mybogjameeth Club, 
and play he ’s old Mr. Lawrence — 
Laurie’s grandfather, you know.” Mil- 
dred had delivered this long speech with- 
out stopping. At its close her mother 
looked startled. ‘‘Have you heard any- 
thing about that*?” she asked. “Has Mrs. 
Tennant or Phoebe spoken to you of him?” 

“No, indeed; what do you mean, Mar- 
mee? — I must always call you Mannee 
now, because you ’re Mrs. March.” And 
Mildred looked both surprised and be- 
wildered. 

“Then I ’m sorry I hinted a mystery,” 
said Mrs. Houghton. “It may not be any- 
thing — very probably it isn’t, but there 
may be something interesting to us all 
about Mr. Acre. I must not tell you what, 
for if there should be any foundation for 
a suspicion which we have in regard to 
him, you may help bring something de- 

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lightful to pass if you do not know the se- 
cret, but I am quite sure you could not do 
it unless you were perfectly unconscious. 
By all means ask Mr. Acre to join your 
club. Papa and I went to see him unex- 
pectedly, last night, after you were asleep, 
and we found him delightful, and he was 
evidently much pleased with your confid- 
ing visit. Treat him just as you have be- 
gun to treat him, and tell him all you can 
about your plays and interests, and how 
dear Phoebe helps you out, as far as she 
is able with so little time on her over- 
burdened hands. Of course you will be 
careful not to be troublesome, nor intru- 
sive, remembering that Mr. Acre is an old 
man. If he accepts your invitation to join 
the club, ask him to this famous ‘Little 
Women’ dinner to-morrow. He will see 
your ‘Laurie’ there, and complete the 
chain. ’ ’ 

“But mayn’t I know the secret, Mar- 
mee? Do tell me; then it will be still 
more like the book, for Jo and her mother 
had a secret — don’t you remember?” 
pleaded Mildred. 

“Yes, but I can’t tell you this one until 
I am sure there is one to tell,” laughed 
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Mrs. Houghton. ‘‘Dismiss it from your 
mind; I am sorry I said a word. And be 
sure I will tell you as soon as there is any- 
thing that I can tell. ^ ’ 

“Well, I shall probably die thinking 
about it — or else guess it!’’ added Mil- 
dred, with a sigh, followed by a quick 
laugh, for she had well-founded confidence 
in her own nimble wits. 

The club went that afternoon for their 
second visit to their new acquaintance, 
this time with all the impressiveness of a 
deputation. Mildred carried under her 
arm — at her mother’s suggestion — ^her 
copy of “Little Women,” grown shabby 
from much reading, lest Mr. Acre should 
prove deficient in knowledge of the girls’ 
classic. 

The old gentleman looked surprised, but 
decidedly pleased, to see them again so 
soon. It was flattering to find himself so 
attractive to four bright girls of an age 
which might have found him and Ms age 
burdensome. 

“We hope you won’t mind our coming 
again so very soon,” said Mildred, acting 
as spokesman for her following. “But 
we came on business.” 

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am proud and pleased to see you, for 
whatever reason, ’ ’ returned the old gentle- 
man, to May’s unutterable joy, for she 
found it blissful to be talked to with the 
ceremony of a day far older than Mr. 
Acre’s, who unconsciously perpetuated 
the dignity of his father. 

‘^We came to explain to you the secret 
of the Mybogjameeth Club,” continued 
Mildred. ‘‘Did you ever read ‘Little Wo- 
men’?” 

“I am ashamed to confess that I never 
have read it,” said Mr. Acre. “It was 
written too late for my daughter’s enjoy- 
ment. Even if a boy would have cared 
for it, my son was too old for it when it 
appeared, though he was younger — ” Mr. 
Acre stopped abruptly. 

“It is the loveliest book!” “It is per- 
fectly grand!” “We love it so, you can’t 
think ! ’ ’ cried the club in chorus. 

“I am perfectly certain it is charming, 
since it has delighted two generations of 
little women,” said Mr. Acre 

“I brought my copy along in case you 
hadn’t read it,” said Mildred. “You 
must excuse the cover; you see I read it 
so very much, and you can’t keep a book 

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as I would like to when you take it to bed 
with you, and eat candy while you read it. 
Let me show you. The girls in here are 
Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. We play we ’re 
they, and we have taken their names. We 
have a post-office, and lots of things. 
And there is the dearest, sweetest, pret- 
tiest, best big girl — she ’s nineteen — Miss 
Phoebe, and she ’s the boy of the book, 
Laurie Lawrence. And ^ Myhogjameeth* 
is just those four names, all twisted up, 
and made up into a word. And we came 
to ask you if you would like to join this 
club, as an honorary member, and let us 
call you Mr. Lawrence, Laurie’s grand- 
father? He was just as nice as he could 
be, and the girls loved him lots — after they 
knew him — they were a little bit scared at 
first because he was very dignified, and — 
and grave. If you like, I ’ll leave the book 
here for you to read, and you can decide 
after you ’ve tried it. But we hope you ’ll 
join.” 

The keen eyes under the heavy brows 
twinkled, but the firm mouth was unsmil- 
ing as Mr. Acre replied with an old-time 
bow: ‘‘There is no need for me to con- 
sider. I accept at once, with profound 

[nil 


The Little Women Club 


gratitude. I realize that you could not 
pay me a higher compliment, and I will 
try to be worthy of it. Please consider 
me, henceforth, Mr. Lawrence — I think 
you said Lawrence! And leave the book, 
if you please, that I may read it, and un- 
derstand more fully the intent of the club, 
and my own part.” 

‘‘We ’re ever so much obliged to you for 
accepting,” said Mildred politely, her 
statement corroborated by a murmur from 
the other club-members. “We mean to 
have a dinner at our house to-morrow, and 
play it ’s the one Jo tried to have, and 
spoiled everything. It ’s chapter eleven, 
in the first part, only don’t be afraid to 
come, if you read it, for we don’t mean to 
have everything spoiled. Mr. Lawrence 
didn’t come, and Miss Crocker did, but 
she had nothing to do with the story, and 
we can’t follow it in every least thing. 
So please come — if we ’re not too little — 
and not too bold in asking,” added Mil- 
dred, suddenly remembering her mother’s 
warning. 

“I’ll come, with pleasure,” said the 
newly acquired “Grrandpa Lawrence.” 
And he escorted the club to the gate ‘ ‘ quite 
[ 112 ] 


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as though he knew how Mr. Lawrence es- 
corted Beth home,’’ declared Madge rap- 
turously. 

^‘Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy” were ready 
and waiting long before the dinner-hour 
on the following day, in all the charm — 
and discomfort — of freshly starched white 
dresses. ‘^Laurie” joined them early; 
Mrs. Houghton was delighted to see that 
Miss Phoebe had never looked more charm- 
ing than that day, her greyish-green cham- 
brey with its white embroidery setting off 
her fresh tints to perfection. 

‘‘Mr. Lawrence” appeared promptly to 
the moment, returning “Little Women” 
with many thanks, after he had saluted his 
hostesses, big and little, for Mrs. Hough- 
ton had begged to be allowed to imperson- 
ate the unwelcome “Miss Crocker” — since 
Mrs. March had not been at the dinner — 
as she dared not leave Mr. Acre entirely 
to the children’s care. 

“Your favorite book is really charming, 
I find, my dears,” said Mr. Acre as he 
gave the worn volume into Mildred’s 
hands. “It is most wholesome and true 
to nature. The characters are so genuine 
that I can well understand your love for it, 

8 — The Little Women Club. [113] 


Tlie Little Women Club 


and it has the rare touch of sincerity that 
children, especially, are so quick to feel.” 

^Wes, sir,” said Mildred, rather bewil- 
dered at categorical reasons for liking 
that which she loved as she loved sunshine 
and air, without knowing why. 

They drew up to the table, ^‘Meg” at 
the head, Jo” at the foot, the impersona- 
tor of Miss Crocker at ‘‘Meg’s” right, 
having first taken care that “Laurie” was 
seated beside the new member. 

The asparagus had its heads on, the 
bread was not burned black, the lobster 
did not look too small for its consumers, 
even without the “grove of lettuce leaves.” 
The potatoes were quite cooked and mealy, 
nor was the blanc-mange lumpy, nor the 
salad-dressing indicative of having caused 
distress to its maker. Altogether the 
feast — following conscientiously the real 
Jo’s on the day of her discomfiture in the 
matter of viands — was totally unlike its 
prototype in the minor matter of being 
well-cooked. Even the two most realistic 
members of the Mybogjameeth Club could 
not complain of this divergence from the 
text until they had satisfied their healthy 
appetites on the good things before them. 

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When they reached the dessert Mildred 
began to feel uneasily that they were hav- 
ing a very good time, but were not playing 
^‘Little Women” faithfully. She con- 
trived to telegraph her conviction to the 
rest while ‘^Grandfather Lawrence” was 
chatting with his grandson, oblivious to 
her motions. 

Mrs. Houghton had succeeded in draw- 
ing Miss Phoebe out, and the girl was 
unconsciously telling the old gentleman 
much of herself, as she chattered — all shy- 
ness at last done away with — of her pu- 
pils, her reading, her pleasures, so simple, 
so few, so unlike those of most girls of her 
age more fortunately situated. Mr. Acre 
listened with increasing interest and re- 
spect. He was an old soldier, and recog- 
nized a good fighter in the little creature 
beside him, with the soft face, full of hu- 
mor and cheerfulness, who innocently 
betrayed her fidelity in sticking to her post 
in spite of vigorous assaults from foes 
harder to face than those carrying mus- 
kets and bayonets. He addressed her as 
“Mr. Laurie,” for he was proving unex- 
pectedly adaptable in carrying out the 
play, and he had heard no other name for 

[ 115 ] 


The Little Women Club 

the neighbor charming him so thoroughly 
than ^^Miss Phoebe/’ which slipped once 
from Madge’s lips. Once or twice Mrs. 
Honghton had spoken of her mother as 
Mrs. Tennant, and Mr. Acre naturally 
supposed that the girl was Phoebe Tennant. 

Something in her eyes, in certain small 
gestures, and sudden movements charac- 
teristic of her, stirred painful yet pleas- 
antly vague memories, dimly reminiscent 
of he knew not what or whom. Mrs. 
Houghton found her heart beat faster as 
she noticed how Mr. Acre ’s eyes rested ou 
unconscious Phoebe as if she puzzled as 
well as pleased him. 

When the strawberries came on, heaped 
high, and served with tliick cream, the re- 
sult of Mildred’s telegrams appeared. 

‘‘Amy” took a heaping spoonful, choked 
most successfully, and hid her face in her 
napkin. 

“Meg” tasted, and hastily took a sip of 
water, making the wry face which should 
have been “Miss Crocker’s.” 

“ ‘Oh, what is itr ” asked the second Jo 
in the words of the first one, and trembling 
ostentatiously. 

“Sugar instead of salt, and the cream 
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The Little Women Club 


is sweet!” ^^Meg” replied, reversing the 
words of her part, but with the ^Hragic 
gesture” faithfully rendered. 

There was a shout of appreciation at 
this bit of acting, which seemed to cover 
the previous discrepancies between this 
dinner and the one in the book, and then 
every one ate the delicious fruit with great 
enjojunent. 

‘‘Laurie” dutifully walked with his 
grandfather to his own gate after the din- 
ner was over, and Mrs. Houghton, watch- 
ing them depart, looked as though she were 
tasting the most delicious morsel of all 
when the “Little Women” dinner had 
ended. 


[ 117 ] 


CHAPTEE VIII 


MILDRED GUESSES THE SECRET 


CTUATED by the double motives of 



/A affection and the desire to be faith- 
ful to her part, Molly made Mr. Acre a pair 
of slippers. They were not ‘^pansies on a 
deeper purple ground,’’ for Molly could 
not do worsted work, nor are those marvel- 
lous flights of genius which were in vogue 
in the days of our mothers, when ^‘Little 
Women” was written, any longer to be 
found. 

Dainty filo floss etchings, exquisite 
drawn linen and lace work have replaced 
the lamp-mats, tidies, and other horrors 
of a past generation, for the sense of 
beauty has been more wisely directed, and 
girls of to-day know how to make the 

house beautiful” better than those of the 
’sixties. 

Molly could knit as well as Beth herself, 
however, and she worked away as indefat- 
igably on a pair of bedroom slippers, in 


[ 118 ] 


The Little Women Club 


two shades of violet, as the nearest substi- 
tute for the purple-pansy-worsted work of 
the story. 

In the meantime the Dillons had not 
been forgotten, and the Myhogjameeth 
Club went seriously to work preparing the 
first issue of the paper which they in- 
tended publishing weekly to raise a fund 
for the curing of patient Mary Margaret. 

The wisdom of allowing Mildred to im- 
personate Jo now shone forth clearly for 
the first time. She was in her element, 
and began her task of editing with the 
rosiest views of what was to be accom- 
plished. 

^Wou must each contribute,’’ she said 
cheerfully to the other M’s as though it 
were merely a question of ordering up a 
pound of tea from the grocer. ‘^Meg 
writes a story — rather a long one for such 
a small paper; Beth has a little fable; Jo 
has two poems and all the notices and 
editor ’s things ; and Amy — well it really 
is n’t fair for Amy only to write a letter of 
apology — she ought to send something.” 

‘‘We might as well be in school,” 
grumbled May. “If there is one thing in 


[ 119 ] 


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the whole cuiiyquum I despise it is com- 
positions/’ 

the what? What does that mean?” 
asked Molly, rather impressed by this new 
and curious-sounding word. 

‘‘Wait! Let ’s each say what it ought 
to mean!” cried Madge. This was a fa- 
vorite game of the M’s to define a word 
whose meaning they did not know accord- 
ing to the idea it presented to their minds. 

“A sty, with a whole lot of little pigs 
running around with their tales kinkling,” 
said Molly promptly. 

“A barber’s shop, with a whole pile of 
frizzled wigs on top of heads which have 
to think out compositions,” said Madge. 

“A sort of corkscrew — no, gimlet tiling, 
with which the teacher makes holes, and 
pours the facts she wants you to learn 
through them, ’ ’ said Mildred. 

“I can’t guess, because I know what 
Amy meant, though she didn’t get the 
word quite right,” said Miss Phoebe, join- 
ing in the laugh hailing each new defini- 
tion. “I suspect she means curriculum, 
and that is a course of studies laid down 
for pupils to follow. Jo guessed nearest 
right.” 


[ 120 ] 


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^ ‘ How shall we ever get up enough num- 
bers to send Mary Margaret to the hos- 
pital, if you make a fuss about the very 
first oneT’ demanded Mildred impatiently. 
‘‘Just write; that ’s all. I ’m sure it ’s 
easy enough.” 

“What have you ready for this first 
number?” asked Miss Phoebe, compassion- 
ating Mildred’s struggle with minds dif- 
ferent from her own. 

“Not one solitary thing but my own 
poems,” returned the budding author. 
“What a pity that Laurie didn’t write 
for the paper!” 

“He did, after that time when he was 
admitted to the Pickwick Club,” said 
Molly cheerfully. “Eead your poems, and 
then let Laurie write something. ’ ’ 

“Mine are two. One is called ‘The 
Birdlings,’ and the other is about April. 
Ho you think that matters in the July 
number?” asked Mildred, suddenly paus- 
ing. 

“No, of course not! Hurry up!” cried 
Madge impatiently. She admired Mil- 
dred’s productions beyond expression, and 
firmly believed that her playmate would go 
down to posterity on the rolls of fame. 

[ 121 ] 


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Mildred obediently read: ‘‘The Bird- 

lings.’^ 

“The mother-bird swings on the elm- 
tree’s branch, 

Within her tiny round nest, 

And the eggs lie spotted, and fair, 
and warm. 

Beneath her brooding breast ; 

And she sits patiently winking her eye. 
For she knows the birdlings will come 
by and by. 

“The eggs lie broken, with jagged 
shells. 

Among the nodding clover; 

And the birdlings cry and stretch 
their wings. 

For their prison term is over ; 

And the mother hastens their food to 
seek. 

And drops it tenderly into each beak. 

'‘So she nourishes them with motherly 
love. 

Till they spread their wings to fly, 
And when the nest is too small for all. 

They soar into the sky; 

Into the far blue sky they soar. 

And the mother-bird swings on the 
branch no more. ’ ’ 

[ 122 ] 


The Little Women Club 

When the hearty applause which Mil- 
dred partial audience always gave her 
readings had abated, she followed up this 
contribution to the projected paper with 
the second poem. 

^^This is called ^ April, ^ she announced, 
and read : 

‘‘Now April comes with smiling face. 

And moves with all her winsome grace 
To where the flowers are lying, 

And bending downward full of fears. 
She drops upon the leaves her tears. 
And says : ‘ Alas ! they Te dying. ’ 

‘ ‘ Then the flowers again, to ease her pain. 
Lift up their heads to greet her ; 

So, comforted, she moves away, 

And yields her place to blooming May, 
Who trippeth forth to meet her.’’ 

“Those are very pretty, dear, but are 
they really all that you have for the pa- 
per?” asked Miss Phoebe. 

“Yes, all I have yet, but the rest are 
going to write,” said Mildred. “It ’s 
time we had it out, though.” 

“Honestly, Mil — Jo, I can’t write, and 
that ’s all about it,” said May decidedly. 

[ 123 ] 


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^^Well, I ’m sure I would rather back 
out than anything, and if you don’t write 
I don ’t see why I should, ’ ’ said Madge. 

^Mt makes me sick even to think of it, 
but I suppose we ought to try, if we want 
to help Mary Margaret,” said good little 
Molly disconsolately. 

Mildred’s eyes filled with tears of im- 
patience and disappointment. Just what 
might have followed it is impossible — as 
well as unpleasant^ — to conjecture, but that 
‘‘old Mr. Lawrence” came along oppor- 
tunely, with his hands full of delightfully 
knobby packages for the post-office, and 
espied the signs of trouble at a glance. 

“Now what ’s wrong?” he asked, turn- 
ing up Mildred’s face with the end of his 
cane gently tucked under her chin. “You 
look forlorn, every one of you, save this 
grandson of mine.” 

“We had the nicest plan, sir,” said Mil- 
dred, the tears running down in spite of 
her hard winking. ‘ ‘ There is a family 
Miss — ^Laurie told us of, a poor Irish fam- 
ily named ‘Dillon, and we go to see them. 
They ’ve a lot of children, and the oldest 
one is a girl our age, and she ’s badly 
crippled. We go to see her more than the 
[ 124 ] 


The Little Women Club 

rest, and 'we try to amuse her, but you 
can’t amuse any one very much who is just 
sitting there getting worse and worse, and 
her bone pricking through. They say she 
can’t be cured except by a great doctor in 
the city, who does nothing but bones, and 
of course they have n’t any money to send 
her, because they haven’t enough to stay 
here, only they ’re helped. Mr. Dillon 
took to the drink; he was an awful nice 
man before that; used to empty his wife’s 
tubs, and till them when she took in wash- 
ing — she told us about it.” Mildred had 
quite unconsciously fallen into a touch of 
a brogue in her dramatic interest and 
identification with Mrs. Dillon’s troubles. 
‘^We thought we ’d publish a paper every 
week, and get people to subscribe to it and 
send Mary Margaret — that ’s the crip- 
ple’s name — to the hospital in the city 
with the money. But now — ^just when we 
met to get up the first number — the girls 
say they can’t write, and there isn’t one 
thing, not even for that first number, but 
my two poems.” 

^^H’m! Not a very bright prospect for 
continuing publication, is it? Don’t fret; 
there may be another way. Let me see 

[ 125 ] 


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the poems, if you please. ’ ’ And Mr. Acre 
put out his hand for the papers Mildred 
was still holding. 

She yielded them up reluctantly, and 
their elderly friend read them, marking 
the rhythm on the grass with his cane. 
^‘Not bad; not at all bad for a girl under 
twelve,” he said, handing them back with 
a kindly smile under his heavy brows as he 
looked into the flushed, tearful face of the 
poet. 

‘^She ’s a perfect genius!” declared 
Madge, recovering somewhat from the em- 
barrassment into which they had all been 
thrown by the betrayal to Mr. Acre of the 
fact that they had deserted the cause and 
the editor. ^ AYe ’d like to write, and pub- 
lish the paper, and help Mary Margaret — 
we really and truly would — and we 
thought we could when we first spoke of 
the paper. But when it comes to doing it, 
we find it ’s just impossible — so we are n’t 
too mean, are we T ’ 

‘‘No, I should think no one could blame 
you for not being literary young ladies. 
Indeed, there are many who would find it 
commendable in you not to be literary 
young ladies, in an age when the oldest and 
[ 126 ] 



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NOT BAD AT ALL FOR A LITTLE GIRL, HE SAID. 


[ 127 ] 












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The Little Women Club 


the youngest are flooding a weary market 
with their novels/’ said the old gentleman 
whimsically. ‘^Now about this little lame 
girl. I ’ll tell you a secret. I have rather 
more money than one old man needs, and I 
have n’t any one nearer to me than my old 
housekeeper and my dog and horse to 
claim it. So it is my whim, sometimes, to 
try to make this wealth useful to others. 
If the little girl’s case is as bad as you 
think, in one sense, and as good — as deserv- 
ing — as you think, I shall be glad to send 
her to the city, and get her the very best 
skill to be obtained. I have a friend who 
stands first among the surgeons of New 
York ; he will help us cure your little Mary 
Margaret. So cheer up, and don’t grieve 
for your frustrated plans, little Jo.” 

The Mybogjameeth Club arose in a body 
— a body with but one mind — and threw 
itself upon Mr. Acre with a wild whoop 
of ecstasy. They did not stop to remem- 
ber that he might not like it, still less that 
they had ever been afraid of him — all that 
they remembered was that he was going to 
save Mary Margaret from her lifelong 
martyrdom, and that they loved him 
madly. 

n — The Little Women Club. [129] 


The Little Women Club 


But he did like it! After the old gen- 
tleman got over being surprised, he liked 
it as he had rarely liked anything else in 
all his long life. He settled his necktie, 
caught his breath, and, as soon as he had 
caught enough of it to speak, turned to 
laughing Miss Phoebe, who sat enjoying 
the scene, and said: Don’t you endorse 
the club ’s sentiments, my dear young lady, 
or is it the dignity of being nineteen which 
keeps you from joining in their expression 
of approval ? I should not mind one more 
sweet lassie calling me pleasant names. 
But that is the worst of being grown up, 
and Miss Tennant, isn’t it? You can’t 
throw yourself headlong, even at an old 
philanthropist. ’ ’ 

^‘It is the worst of being grown up, al- 
though I am not Miss Tennant, but Miss 
Akers ; yes sir, ’ ’ laughed Miss Phoebe. 

The old gentleman stopped laughing 
and turned upon her sharply. ^‘You are 
not Miss Tennant?” he said. ‘‘Then who 
are you? Surely your mother is Mrs. 
Tennant, of the little cottage in Elm 
Street?” 

“Yes, sir; but my mother has been 
twice married and widowed. I am Miss 

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Akers ; my name is not unlike your own — 
A-k-e-r-s-, while yours is A-c-r-e/^ said 
Miss Phoebe. 

'^Who was your grandfather? Ask 
your mother what was your grandfather’s 
name, and where your father came from,” 
said Mr. Acre, singularly excited. 

don’t know what his name was, nor 
where he lived,” said Miss Phoebe won- 
deringly. ‘^My mother may know, but 
she says my father rarely spoke of his 
home, because my grandfather had quar- 
relled with him — because of his marriage, 
I think, though every one loves Mamma, 
and Grandfather did not know her to ob- 
ject to her.” 

To the amazement of the club, and es- 
pecially of Miss Phoebe, Mr. Acre turned 
on his heel and hurried away without an- 
other word. Mildred turned white with 
excitement, and sprang to her feet, clap- 
ping her hands, her eyes black and dilated. 

see, I see! Mamma’s secret! Oh, I 
do know it now ! ’ ’ she cried to her friends ’ 
consternation. They began to think that 
every one had gone mad at once. 


[ 131 ] 


CHAPTER IX 


THE BAD EFFECT OF GOOD NEWS 

M ISS PHCEBE arose from her seat in 
the grass after she had watched Mr. 
Acre’s retreating figure out of sight. She 
was flushed, and trembled with excitement 
over his last strange questions and inex- 
plicable behavior. ^ ‘ I must go home to ask 
Mamma what this can mean just as quickly 
as I can get there, ’ ’ she said to the amazed 
girls. ^‘Mildred, please do not guess any- 
thing yet. I will tell you all if there is 
anything to tell. Won’t you walk with 
me, girls, as far as I go!” 

Mildred in her turn watched her friends 
out of sight, too preoccupied even to 
notice that Miss Phoebe had not called her 
Jo. Then she ran to the house as fast as 
her feet could carry her, and tumbled up- 
stairs in her haste to get to her mother. 

Mamma — Marmee,” she cried. 
know your secret! Mr. Acre is Miss 
Phoebe’s grandfather. He has just found 

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it out! He thought her name was Ten- 
nant till ten minutes ago. But why is it 
Akers, and not Acre!” 

am absolutely ignorant of the whole 
story, Mildred,” Mrs. Houghton replied, 
dropping her work, and looking not less 
excited than the girl before her. ‘‘Do tell 
me what has happened.” 

Mildred faithfully related the recent 
scene in the garden. “What do you sup- 
pose is coming next!” she asked as she 
ended. “Will Miss Phoebe go right away 
to live with him! Will she have to leave 
her mother, or will he give them both a lot of 
money, and let them stay together in the 
cottage!” 

“I have not the least idea, Mildred. I 
am afraid, however, that there is going to 
be trouble bringing Phoebe and her grand- 
father together — if grandfather he be ; 
you know we are jumping at conclu- 
sions,” said Mrs. Houghton. “I should 
never have had an inkling of the possibility 
of such a relationship if I had not guessed 
from something she said that Mrs. Ten- 
nant had thought of it. I feel quite cer- 
tain that she is going to prove very hard 
to win over after so many years of neglect 

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on the old gentleman’s part, and she may 
not be willing that Phoebe should go to 
him, just because he has so much to bestow 
which they need so sorely. I think I will 
go to see Mrs. Tennant in about an hour 
from now; I am her closest friend, and 
she must not be allowed to wrong herself 
and Phoebe, if we can help it. ’ ’ 

^^Oh, please, please take me with you, 
Mamma ! I will stay with Miss — with 
Laurie, if you want to see Mrs. Tennant 
alone, but I should fly into tiny, mad 
crumbs if I were left here by myself to 
wonder what was happening,” pleaded 
Mildred. 

^Wou absurd child. What sort of 
crumbs are mad ones!” laughed her 
mother. ^‘But I will take you; it would 
be hard staying here alone. How I do 
spoil you! It is no wonder your grandma 
Houghton says I am making you into a 
wilful old lady. ’ ’ 

Mildred laughed gaily; this was one of 
the stock jokes of the Houghton family, 
for Mildred was really very young for her 
age in many things, though she was her 
mother’s confldant and companion. 

Mrs. Houghton and Mildred found the 

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two inmates of the cottage in the greatest 
state of excitement; Mrs. Tennant, indeed, 
not far removed from hysterics, and Miss 
Phoebe white, with big black circles under 
her eyes from her effort at self-control. 

am so glad that yon have come,’^ 
cried Mrs. Tennant. ^‘Phoebe has been 
trying to persuade me that if her grand- 
father wishes a reconciliation I should re- 
ceive his advances, and I never, never 
will.^’ 

^^Then he is your grandfather P ^ cried 
Mildred, before she could stop herself. 

Miss Phoebe nodded as Mrs. Houghton 
said: would not try to decide every- 

thing at the very first moment of making 
such a discovery, if I were you. You will 
be obliged to answer the inquiry he made 
as to who you are, and after that it will be 
for him to make the next move. You can 
decide what to do when that has been ac- 
complished. ’ ’ 

‘M made Phoebe write her reply, said 
poor quivering Mrs. Tennant. ‘‘Read it, 
Phoebe.^’ 

“ ‘Dear Mr. Acre,’ ” Miss Phoebe obe- 
diently read. “ ‘The question you asked 
relative to my grandfather’s name, as well 

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as my father birthplace, I referred to my 
mother. My grandfather was William 
Acre. My father was born in Boston. 
He married very early, and against his 
father’s will, a young lady worthy of him 
in every way, but to whom my grandfather 
objected on account of her youth, my 
father’s youth — and dependence upon his 
father in pecuniary atfairs. When my 
father persisted in disobeying my grand- 
father, he was cut otf from further inter- 
course with his family. In consequence 
of this, and the bitterness with which it 
filled him, he changed his name from Acre 
to Akers. He never saw any of his kin- 
dred again, for he died fourteen years ago. 
These facts are as new to me, except the 
story of the marriage, as they are to you. 

Wours respectfully, Phoebe Akers.’ ” 

^‘That is a very proper note, little 
Phoebe,” said Mrs. Houghton cheerfully. 
^Ht is a plain statement of facts, asking 
and refusing nothing for the future. It is 
for Mr. Acre to make the advances, and I 
agree with you, that it would be wrong to 
withdraw from them if he makes them — as 
I feel sure he will. ’ ’ 

'H have been left to bear poverty all 

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these years without a message from my 
father-in-law; he has never inquired 
whether or not his son left children. I 
will not, I cannot, accept his friendship 
now,” cried Mrs. Tennant. 

^^You forget, my dear Mrs. Tennant, 
that you married again, and that Mr. Acre 
probably felt that this removed you from 
his care,” said Mrs. Houghton gently. 
^‘But allowing that a proud, wilful man 
did wrong you once, if he is now sorry for 
doing so, and begs you to forgive him, 
ought n ^t you bury the past ? Is n T life 
much too short to harbor resentment and 
bitterness! And for Phoebe’s sake, ought 
you not be friends! The little girl needs 
friends, needs some one to protect her, as 
you are not able to do.” Mrs. Houghton 
would not refer to the old gentleman’s 
wealth, but no one could forget that; as 
he had said that afternoon, he ^Tiad more 
money than one old man needs.” And 
brave Phoebe would be so glad of a little 
help over the hard places, a little time to 
enjoy her youth and beauty! 

Mrs. Tennant began to sob and Mrs. 
Houghton said quickly: There, there! 

We must not talk any more. This has 

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been too exciting an afternoon to an in- 
valid. Yon will feel differently when you 
are calmer. Come, Mildred; let ns say 
good-by. Come to see me in the morn- 
ing, Phoebe-bird, and tell me how your 
mother is. Shall I post your note for 
you ? ’ ^ 

^^Let me put it in the Mybogjameeth 
post-office,’^ said Mildred. 

^^No, no; the Mybogjameeth is not pre- 
cisely the place for serious affairs,” said 
her mother with a smile, as Miss Phoebe 
reluctantly parted with the note which had 
been so hard to write. Cheer up, 
Phoebe-bird; I feel sure this is going to 
prove a very happy discovery. Good-by, 
dear friends; sleep well, and dream of 
peace and happiness to come. ’ ’ 

But the peace and happiness seemed 
doomed to be but a dream. The reply to 
Miss Phoebe’s note came quickly. In it 
the old gentleman humbly begged to be 
forgiven for his long years of silence, 
years in which, after he had aroused to the 
desire of finding them, he had sought 
vainly for tidings of his son’s widow, and 
the child of whose existence he had only 
heard accidentally, too late to claim her. 

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He acknowledged that his punishment of 
his son’s disobedience had been too se- 
vere ; though he had found it hard to bear 
that disobedience in return for unusual af- 
fection. But if he had been stern, he had 
been sorely tried; loneliness and old age 
had broken his spirit, and he hungered 
still for his only boy, whom he had lost so 
early. He implored his granddaughter 
especially, and Mrs. Tennant, to be gener- 
ous, and forgive him, and to let him teach 
them to love him a little, while he strove 
with all the means at hand to atone for the 
past. 

It was a pathetic note, and Miss Phoebe 
melted as she read it, her whole warm 
young heart going out to the solitary man 
alone in the big house, whom she had al- 
ready learned to regard with atfection for 
his comradeship and kindness to herself 
and the children. But Mrs. Tennant, with 
the firmness of weakness and nervous in- 
validism, refused to listen to the sugges- 
tion of a reconciliation. Miss Phoebe was 
obliged to answer the letter with a short 
one, saying that she was compelled to de- 
fer to her mother’s wishes, which were 
that the relations which Mr. Acre had 

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once severed should never be resumed. 
But she could not help adding that she 
hoped time might alter this decision, and 
that she was ready to forget a past which 
had brought its own retribution to botli 
sides. 

Under these trying circumstances the 
Mybogjameeth Club languished. ‘‘Laurie’’ 
was so unlike himself — herself? — ^that it 
was painful to miss the old light-hearted 
happiness which had been such a delight to 
all the other members. “Grandfather 
Lawrence” rarely came to the post-office 
now, though his many and ingenious gifts 
still arrived for the four younger girls, 
sent by other hands. These four members, 
all of whom now knew the secret, which 
was a secret no longer, felt the righteous 
indignation toward Mrs. Tennant for re- 
buffing the old gentleman natural to youth- 
ful partisanship, especially when its own 
desires are balked. They had come to re- 
gard Mr. Acre as their own private proper- 
ty and they loved him very fondly for his 
unfailing sympathy and goodness to them. 

Many cutting sarcasms were uttered by 
curling red lips over the unforgiving in- 


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valid, whose feeling they could not under- 
stand, and for whom they had no pity. 

There was one, and but one bright spot 
in the gloomy skies of those hard days. 
Mr. Acre had been as good as his word, 
and had taken up Mary Margaret ^s case in 
earnest. 

Letters had flown between Branscombe 
and New York, with the result that Mr. 
Acre’s friend, the great surgeon, had 
obtained admittance into a hospital for the 
little cripple, and was to take her under 
liis own personal care — make her quite 
well and strong, the girls felt sure, with 
the optimism of their years. 

It was a great day for the club when it 
accompanied Mr. Acre to the Dillon’s to 
tell them the news, no hint of it having 
been allowed to reach them until the plans 
were complete. Mrs. Dillon threw her 
wet apron over her head — she was wash- 
ing, as usual — and sat down to cry com- 
fortably for joy. It was rather fortunate, 
when one came to think it over later, that 
she was too excited to remember the con- 
stitutions of her chairs, and that she se- 
lected the one with the queer leg, for it 
promptly broke down, and the shout of 

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rapture with which Ellenteresa, Tim, and 
Johnny hailed their parent’s discomfiture 
saved Mary Margaret from being quite 
overcome by the prospect of restoration 
to health. 

Mr. Acre was able to bring about unex- 
pected wonders; the fathers and mothers 
of the four M ’s, looking on, realized that he 
must have greater wealth than they had 
supposed he had to do what he did, and 
said among themselves more often than 
before that it was a pity that Miss Phoebe 
could not be on good terms with such a 
kind and rich grandfather. 

The fast express from Boston to New 
York, which usually whizzed through 
Branscomhe, was to stop to take on insig- 
nificant Mary Margaret Dillon. Once on 
that train, with the trained nurse engaged 
to care for her on her unaccustomed trav- 
els, she would lie in a comfortable berth, 
and arrive in New York all in good trim 
to begin getting well. 

The Mybogiameeth Club in a body — 
save for Laurie — Mr. Acre, all four M’s 
mothers, and the entire clan of Dillon, in- 
cluding the good baby, sucking the blue 


[ 142 ] 


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worsted edge of his jacket, were at the 
station to see Mary Margaret off. 

^ ‘ Yon go on a litter, my child, but you will 
return on your feet, I hope and believe,’’ 
said the kind old man who was giving the 
poor girl a chance really to live. 

Mary Margaret choked; she could not 
reply. It was a solemn thing to be going 
otf to an immense city alone, knowing that 
it might be long before one returned, and 
that at the best the baby would have com- 
pletely outgrown worsted jackets and the 
knowledge of his patient nurse when she 
came back. 

^ ‘ Say something to the gentleman, Mary 
Margaret,” rebuked her mother. Don’t 
be thinkin’ her ungrateful, sir. She do be 
a bit upset, that ’s all. Oh, Mary, me 
darlint! Will they be carvin’ and pullin’ 
on her much, do you think, sir, to get her 
poor leg down where ’twas mint to be?” 

‘^No, no!” said Mr. Acre impatiently; 
he did not want the child frightened at the 
outset. 

Don’t get well so fast that you cheat 
us out of a visit to the hospital and New 
York, Mary. If all goes well — if I can get 
what I long for most on earth — I shall 

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carry off the entire Mybogjameeth Club to 
see you and the metropolis — only you 
must promise me to get better. ’ ’ 

Here was an announcement! The club 
caught one another’s hands, and gasped 
with delight. 

Oh, if Mrs. Tennant would only give in ! 
With such a thing as this dependant on 
her yielding it really seemed impossible 
that she should remain obdurate. 

’ll say a prayer ivery night for 
your intintion, sir,” said Mary Margaret 
simply, and with so much assurance in her 
voice that then everything must come 
straight that the girls shared her convic- 
tion for the moment. 

The train drew up. The stop must he 
short, for there was schedule time of the 
fastest for the express to make. Strong, 
kind, capable hands swung Mary Mar- 
garet up to other hands waiting to receive 
her, the nurse followed her, the girls waved 
handkerchiefs, crying a little with ex- 
citement and emotion the while, the wheels 
turned, and the train, getting under way 
and up to speed without a loss of a mo- 
ment, whirled Mary Margaret toward her 
deliverance. 


[ 144 ] 


CHAPTER X 


MAKES PEACE 

M ildred thought and thought over 
the problem of how she could unite 
Miss Phoebe and her grandfather, but after 
two weeks of hard thinking was no nearer 
its solution than at first. She consulted 
with the other M’s, and with her mother, 
but they could not help her, and she grew so 
pale and worried over her friend’s troubles 
that Mrs. Houghton advised her to give up 
trying to play the good fairy, and let time 
and future events do what she failed in 
finding a way to do. 

Mildred was so rich in the prospect of 
long years ahead of her in which to see 
wrongs righted, that she could not wait a 
moment ; for it is one of the many contra- 
dictions of queer human nature that only 
when one is so old that there is little time 
in which to wait does he become willing to 
wait patiently. Our English proverb says 
that ^‘everything comes to him who waits,” 

10 — The Little Women Club. [145] 


The Little Women Club 


but the French say it more wisely : ‘ ^ Every- 
thing comes to him who knows how to 
wait,’’ they tell us, and it is just that little 
^^sait attendre^^ which makes all the dif- 
ference. 

Mildred was not yet twelve years old, 
and no one who has studied life’s lessons 
so short a time as that ever yet has learned 
the great science of waiting. She was 
so impatient of the continued wrong-going 
of all that should be going right, that she 
felt called upon to pull the crooked 
straight by main force, as she had seen her 
mother straighten cloth that had tom 
crooked. Yet there was no way ! 

One night as she knelt by the open win- 
dow, her hair blowing around her bare 
shoulders, and the brush hanging idly in 
her hand, as she watched the moon sailing 
through threatening shower clouds which it 
was scattering before it, despair, and yet 
stronger determination than ever not to 
give up, took possession of her resolute 
little mind. 

‘‘Jo made peace between Laurie and his 
grandfather in the book,” she thought. 
“But he did it by getting the old gentle- 
man to apologize, and then it was all right. 

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Now, my old gentleman has apologized, 
and yet nothing is right. And my Laurie 
is getting downright sick worrying over 
it, and her mother is sick, real sick, and 
poor dear Laurie has to take care of her, 
and teach, and fret — and I know it will 
kill her. If I were Mr. Acre I ’d just 
put my pride in my pocket, and go over 
there, and say: ^Now, here I am, and 
here I ’m going to stay and take care of 
you, and you can’t help it.’ ” 

Mildred suddenly straightened herself 
— she had been sitting back on her bare 
heels — and looked at the moon with a new 
expression of challenging hope. 

^^Why, I do believe that ’s the very 
thing!” she cried aloud to that lady, who 
showed no undue elation over the little 
girl’s discovery. wonder why nobody 
ever thought of it ! I suppose it ’s because 
it ’s so simple — just the way it is when you 
find the thing you ’ve lost just under the 
edge of the rug — or the bureau, after 
you ’ve been turning all the drawers upside 
down I Mrs. Tennant is so tired out that I 
shouldn’t wonder if she ’d be delighted to 
have some one come and tell her what she 
must do, and as to Miss Phoebe, it would 

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be the blessedest thing for her ! I wonder 
if Mr. Acre would! I ’m going there in 
the morning and ask him — if Mamma says 
so. 0 dear! what an awful thing pride 
is,” added this youthful moralist. ‘^It ’s 
such a silly thing to be so unhappy for it, 
too! I wonder if ‘pride goes before a 
fair could mean that tJie pride would fall. 
I ’d like a sign that told me this would be 
all right.” And Mildred put herself to 
bed with the unconscious desire for some 
token of success from a power beyond her 
own which we all feel in the hour of a 
great attempt. 

Mrs. Houghton consented, with less con- 
fidence of success than Mildred felt, to her 
little daughter’s going to lay before her 
old friend the simple solution of his diffi- 
culties which she believed that she had 
found. 

Mildred fell back on the imaginary life 
she had led for so many weeks, and per- 
suaded herself that she was Jo going to 
straighten out the misunderstanding be- 
tween Laurie — the real Laurie — and his 
grandfather. The result was that, being 
wrought up to a white heat of excitement, 
she amazed the old gentleman by respond- 

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ing good-morning’^ politely to his saluta- 
tion, but immediately adding: came 

after Boswell’s ‘Johnson.’ I like old Sam 
so well that I think I ’ll try the second 
volume.” 

“You came after Boswell’s ‘Life of 
Johnson’!” repeated Mr. Acre, thinking, 
with considerable reason, that the child 
was slightly out of her mind. “My dear 
little girl, I never gave you such a thing — 
I doubt I have it here — and I can’t imag- 
ine what you like about any of its many 
volumes. ’ ’ 

Mildred blushed painfully. “No, sir; 
I didn’t know I was going to say that. 
That ’s out of ‘Little Women,’ when Jo 
went to make peace. I came to make 
peace, if you please,” she said. 

“Worse and worse,” thought Mr. Acre, 
rising and taking the little girl’s hands in 
his. Her pulses were certainly galloping, 
and her cheeks were hot, her eyes dilated. 

“Dear little Jo,” he said gently, “you 
had better let me walk home with you, and 
start at once; this sun has been too much 
for you.” 

“No, sir,” said Mildred, strongly tempt- 
ed to cry and laugh at the same time, but 

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contenting herself with a little nervous 
gurgle of laughter. ‘‘I am not sick, nor 
crazy, truly; I am just a little excited. I 
have thought of a way for you to make 
everything all right between you and Miss 
Phoebe. ’ ^ 

‘^Mildred! If only you had discovered 
it!’’ exclaimed the old gentleman. 

‘Mt is so easy!” cried Mildred eagerly. 
^ ‘ All you do is go with me, right now, over 
there. You will find Mrs. Tennant on the 
sofa, because there is where she stays all 
day lately. She is dreadfully unhappy to 
be so proud, but she does n’t know how to 
stop, now she ’s got started, I think. And 
Miss Phoebe won’t be giving lessons till 
after lunch to-day. And you would walk 
right in — just like taking a city by assault, 
as they did in history. No, like the other 
ones when they got into Troy, and I ’ll be 
the wooden horse, because I bring you in.” 
And Mildred giggled nervously over the 
picture called up to her imagination. 

‘‘Eather a small horse! Not more than 
a pony!” said Mr. Acre. ‘‘Go on, Mil- 
dred.” 

“Well, you ’d say: ‘I have come to take 
you both to the seashore for a week’ — or 

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something like that/’ Mildred continued, 
speaking very rapidly and with quick 
breath. “You ’d say: ‘I have a right to 
my own granddaughter, and she has a 
right to he taken care of, and I am not 
going to be kept out of my rights any 
longer. And no matter what you say, I 
shall do for you just the same, and be 
friends in spite of you. And so it would 
be better for you not to make any fuss.’ 
And I think Mrs. Tennant would cry, and 
say things at first, and Miss Phoebe would 
get cologne water for her head and wrists, 
and aromatic ammonia to take, and then, 
it would be all over, and Mrs. Tennant 
would be just as glad as any one you had 
done it.” 

Mr. Acre had been tramping up and 
down the room as she talked, and now 
stopped before her. “Out of the mouths 
of babes and sucklings!” he murmured, 
regarding Mildred with new interest and 
curiosity. “May I inquire when you 
practised medicine in a sanitarium for 
nervous invalids f I solemnly believe you 
are quite right, and that it is the only way 
to break down my daughter-in-law’s oppo- 
sition, and that, as you say, she would be 

[1511 


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very glad when it was all over. But may 
I ask what is to become of my pride in 
this little plan of yours? Do you suppose 
that I want to go where I am forbidden, 
and force myself upon people who do not 
want me, even if they are my own kin- 
dred!” 

thought of that,” said Mildred, her 
instinct teaching her the right thing to say. 
^^But I knew you wouldn’t stop such a 
fine big thing, for such a — a foolish little 
thing as pride. Besides, Miss Phoebe 
does want you, dreadfully, and Mrs. Ten- 
nant is the only one holding out, and she 
is so weak and sick she does n’t know what 
she wants.” 

‘‘Little woman, for the first time I begin 
to believe your literary aspirations are 
well-grounded,” said Mr. Acre. “If you 
have such instinctive knowledge of human 
beings and how to manage them as this in- 
dicates, you ought one day to write a good 
novel. ’ ’ 

“I mean to,” replied Mildred in all seri- 
ousness, and with no conceit. “But will 
you go with me to Mrs. Tennant’s!” 

Mr. Acre walked up and down for a few 
minutes longer, then he stopped short, and, 

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throwing his glasses down with a jerk of 
their cord, said: '‘Yes, Jo the second, and 
my lady Solomon, the wise, I will go to 
try your prescription.” 

"Oh goody, goody!” cried Mildred, hop- 
ping wildly about in the relief to body and 
mind of the tension at which she had held 
both. "Come right away, this minute! 
And don’t mind if Mrs. Tennant cries a 
good deal, just at first; she often does, and 
that won’t matter — it will be all right in 
the end. ’ ’ 

Mr. Acre laughed, but caught his breath 
in doing so — he was scarcely less excited 
than his childish mentor. 

The old gentleman lost no time in get- 
ting on his gloves, arming himself with his 
stick, and dusting his hat, then announcing 
himself ready to start. Feeling that they 
needed mutual support, Mildred took his 
hand, and thus they arrived at the little 
cottage, with few words exchanged on the 
way. 

Miss Phoebe stood perfectly still, ar- 
rested in crossing the room to carry her 
mother a glass of water, as she saw the 
visitors, who had entered without ringing, 
through the outer and inner door set wide 

[ 153 ] 


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open. Mrs. Tennant started np on her 
elbow, bnt sank back again, crying, 
''Phoebe, Phoebe, why have yon brought 
him hereP^ 

Mr. Acre went quite up to the invalid’s 
couch, taking Miss Phoebe by the hand as 
he did so. ' ' This little girl has nothing to 
do with my coming, dear madam, ’ ’ he said. 
"I have decided it is high time to cut knots 
which evidently will never be untied. You 
are ill and worn out; Phoebe is on the 
point of breaking, down. You are going to 
close, this house, and come away with me 
for a month’s rest at the seashore, and 
after that you are to receive the care you 
so much need. Phoebe is my dear son’s 
little girl, and I shall assert my right to 
look after her. We are going to be 
friends ; you are both to be my daughters, 
and there is not the slightest use in ex- 
postulating, for here I am, and here I 
shall stay whatever you say. Or rather, 
and better, you will come with me to cool, 
strong breezes, where you will get so well 
that you will see how foolish and wrong 
it is to perpetuate past injustice for a 
single day.” 

"Have I no rights in my own house! I 

[ 154 ] 


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will not see you ; you cast off my husband, 
and I cannot forgive you,’’ cried Mrs. 
Tennant. 

Mr. Acre felt Miss Phoebe press his 
hand, and he answered patiently: There 
was wrong on both sides, which we both, I 
feel sure, repented. In any case I am 
very sorry for waiting till it was too late 
for him to know it before forgiving my son 
— my dear, dear son. We loved each 
other in spite of all. But we will not talk 
about the past. Here we are, and to the 
living we can be just, making one another 
happy while we are together. And to- 
gether we shall most certainly be while I 
live. Phoebe, my little grandchild, go tell 
your pupils that they are to have a long 
vacation, for your rich old grandfather 
has come back, as in story-books, and you 
will not slave your little hands weary any 
more. ’ ’ 

Miss Phoebe looked at the little hands in 
question, too dazed with the events of the 
past few moments to do more than to 
catch, like a child, at the last thought sug- 
gested. 

‘Mt would be queer not to have to wash 
dishes, and not to have to teach, wouldn’t 

[ 155 ] 


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itr’ she said numbly. hated to wash 
dishes, because it made my hands too stiff 
for playing, and now if they grew soft, 
and I didn’t teach, what would be the 
use?” 

Her grandfather glanced at her sharply, 
yet with tears in his eyes. ^‘Help your 
mother, child,” he said. ‘‘She needs 
you.” 

Mrs. Tennant had begun to ciy vio- 
lently, and Miss Phoebe, carrying out Mil- 
dred’s prophecy, fetched the cologne and 
aromatic ammonia, administering both 
with the quiet air of one well used to deal- 
ing with sickness of the nerves. 

. “ It will be all right now, ’ ’ whispered 
Mildred as the sobs grew less painful, and 
the invalid’s eyes drooped wearily. Mr. 
Acre nodded, and drew his little counsellor 
to his knee, putting one arm around her, 
and holding her close without speaking, 
while Miss Phoebe stroked her mother’s 
hair, putting her gently to sleep. 

When that was accomplished Miss 
Phoebe arose. “Come into the other room, 
grandpa dear,” she whispered, and Mildred 
felt the stifled sob in Mr. Acre’s throat as 
he heard the loving title for the first time. 

[ 156 ] 


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With the delicate perception that never 
failed her, Mildred crept toward the door, 
and turned toward the outer one when she 
had reached the hall. am going to tell 
Marmee ; she will be so glad ! And all the 
girls, she added. 

Miss Phoebe threw both arms around 
her and kissed her with a warmth that 
would have compensated Mildred for 
much more effort than she had made for 
the elder girl’s good. 

‘‘Jo made peace, do you remember?” 
she asked. 

Mildred nodded hard. “That ’s why I 
knew it was my place to find the way out,” 
she said. 

‘ ‘ Grandpa will tell me how you did it ; I 
felt sure that you had your little hands in 
this blessed morning’s work,” said Miss 
Phoebe. 

‘ ‘ She has the wisdom of the serpent, and 
the sweetness of the dove, ’ ’ said Mr. Acre, 
stooping to kiss one of the small, thin 
brown hands. “I am coming to see you 
this afternoon and bring my granddaught 
— ^my grandson, Laurie.” 

“And I am going to find Meg, Beth, and 
Amy to tell them. Mercy me — Christo- 

[ 157 ] 


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pher Columbus, I mean — ^won’t they be 
glad?’^ And Mildred ran away rejoicing, 
leaving her friends to get acquainted anew, 
and to enjoy the first-fruits of her loving 
plotting. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE MYBOGJAMEETH CLUB IS REORGANIZED 



HE joy of the Mybogjameeth Club in 


1 the good fortune come to their dear- 
est Miss Pbcebe was only equalled by their 
pride in the fact that it had come through 
them. 

<<Por,’^ argued Madge, ‘‘no matter how 
much you may say that we had nothing to 
do with Mr. Acre coming to Branscombe, 
and that it was his coming which led him 
accidentally to the very spot where Miss 
Phoebe had been hidden all this time, he 
might never have known her — probably he 
wouldn’t have known her — if we hadn’t 
been frightened about him first, and then 
gone to see him, and then asked him into 
our club. And even when he had found 
her through the club, wasn’t it one of us 
who brought them together T’ 

And her audience of three, only too in- 
clined to admit her statements, agreed 
with her that the club had been, under 


[ 159 ] 


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providence, the means of uniting this de- 
voted grandfather and his beloved Phoebe. 
For ‘^devoted” was. certainly the word 
for Mr. Acre’s attitude toward the trea- 
sure which he had recovered. He never 
willingly allowed Miss Phoebe out of his 
sight, and when she was where his eyes 
could rest upon her, they followed her 
every movement with such admiring, dot- 
ing love that it was very fortunate that 
she was too sweet and loving to be in the 
least harmed by his absorption in her. 

It was somewhat noble of the club to re- 
joice so fully in Miss Phoebe’s happiness, 
for there was no doubt it took her from 
them more or less. 

The plan of carrying off her and her 
frail mother to the seashore, Mr. Acre lost 
no time in executing. And that visit 
lengthened out into one of six weeks’ dura- 
tion, and was preceded by a trip to Boston 
from which Miss Phoebe returned with 
two trunks full of rainbow-hued gowns, 
transforming the demure little Phoebe- 
bird into a tropical creature under whose 
lovely plumage she scarcely recognized 
herself. 

feel as though I were that lucky girl 
[ 160 ] 


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in the fairy story who fell down through 
the water, and came to the hut of the little 
old woman, who begged her to stay with 
her and help her, saying that then she 
would give her all that she desired. And 
when the time came for the girl to go 
home, the old woman showered precious 
stones upon her, and she went back shim 
ing with lovely colors, and sparkling with 
gems.” As Miss Phoebe spoke she was 
holding up first one dainty frock and then 
another for the dumb-stricken M’s be- 
holding. None of the girls had ever seen 
such visions of exquisite fabrics and skill- 
ful work, and they were mute with admira- 
tion. Miss Phoebe herself could not yet 
believe they were for her to wear amid 
gay scenes, but half thought that she 
would wake up suddenly to don her old- 
time simple gowns, and go to train little 
Bertie Dean’s obdurate thumb to play 
scales. 

Mildred was the first to rally, as she 
was usually the first to respond to any 
allusion to the books she so dearly loved. 

‘Won know why that girl got all those 
beautiful gems, Laurie dear,” she said 
with a sly look. ^‘You remember how 

] 1 — The Little Women [ 161 ] 


The Little Women Club 


when the tree that was too full asked to be 
shaken, and the bread that was too much 
baked begged to be taken out of the oven, 
she stopped to help them? And how she 
waited on that little old woman, and never 
grumbled? I guess the girls that get such 
fine things showered upon them ’most al- 
ways earn them first.” 

Miss Phoebe wrote glowing accounts 
from the seashore of her pleasures, but 
the days crawled slowly without her, and 
six weeks is a long time. 

The Mybogjameeth Club languished; 
the post-office was less used, for Miss 
Phoebe’s letters through the real post- 
office largely took its place. Mildred 
could not help feeling that playing Meg, 
Jo, Beth, and Amy was not so satisfactory 
as she had hoped it to be. Poor little Mil- 
dred was always making that discovery 
in regard to the schemes which seemed so 
promising when she had formed them. 
Glowing anticipations invariably dwindled 
away into vague dissatisfaction. Nothing 
was wrong, but nothing was right. The 
other girls did not mind, did not stop to 
think whether things were right or wrong, 
but played something else when their 
[ 162 ] 


The Little Women Club 


plans proved unsatisfactory. Mildred 
could not do this; she wanted to do what 
she had wanted to do, and she could not 
understand why it was that things were 
forever falling flat that had seemed to her, 
when tliey had not yet taken form outside 
her glowing imagination, to be mines of 
unending bliss. School began again be- 
fore Miss Phoebe returned; the four M’s 
passed the little cottage daily on their way 
to and fro ; it looked melancholy, with its 
blinds tight shut, and the grass untrimmed, 
and a sign of ‘^To let” nailed between 
the parlor-windows. When Mrs. Tennant 
returned it would be to live with Mr. Acre 
in the big house, which was getting done 
over into the most cheerful and prettiest 
shape to receive them. 

It seemed to the lonely girls as if they 
had lost their ‘^Laurie” forever, as they 
gazed sadly at the deserted nest of the 
‘ ' Phoebe-bird. ” Her frequent letters did 
not remove this impression, for they spoke 
of dances at the hotels, and drives to points 
of interest, and meetings with people 
whose names were often signed to stories 
and poems in the big magazines, and who 

[ 163 ] 


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were so unreal and so vaguely great to the 
four little girls that it put their Miss 
Phoebe afar, into another world than 
theirs, to know that she was with these 
great people, in that realm of fiction which 
fiction-writers inhabit. 

Late in September, however, there came 
a day when the big house was astir, and 
the Mybogjameeth Club was up early 
studying the weather-signs in the sk^^ 
Even their anxiety was unable to see a 
threat in the bright blue, with long white 
streaks, indicating a brisk autumnal wind, 
doming their little world above the sway- 
ing tree-tops. 

Mr. Acre was coming home, bringing his 
daughter-in-law and granddaughter with 
him. Miss Phoebe wrote that their Brans- 
combe friends would never recognize the 
invalid they had known in the mother she 
was about to show them. 

The club, badged and in its best, was 
waiting impatiently at the station nearly 
an hour before the train could possibly get 
in, and even Molly, the calm, was worrying 
lest it be late. But it was not late — the 
hardest-hearted locomotive could not dally 


The Little Women Club 


with four throbbing hearts drawing it on 
like magnets. 

Miss Phoebe stepped otf the train first; 
in an instant there was nothing left visible 
of her except in fleeting glimpses of vari- 
ous bits of skirt, hat, and fluttering rib- 
bons, for she was encircled by eight arms, 
and borne down by four ardent and fran- 
tic young creatures, who seemed intent on 
doing what the ocean had failed to do, 
and to drown her in caresses. It was quite 
true that it was hard to recognize Mrs. 
Tennant in the figure stepping quickly off 
the car and embracing Mrs. Houghton with 
a happy laugh, while the color mounted in 
her thin face. Mr. Acre followed his new 
family; the Mybogjameeth welcomed this 
valued member with only less enthusiasm 
than it had shown toward his grand- 
daughter. The old gentleman looked at 
least ten years younger; he could scarcely 
be more than ^Hhe elderly Mr. Acre’’ now. 
The salt breezes, but still more the joy and 
loving companionship, had done wonders 
for him. 

The joyous procession walked up to the 
house from the station, all except Mrs. 
Houghton and Mrs. Tennant, who drove 

[ 165 ] 


The Little Women Club 


away in a bewitching little carriage, drawn 
by the prettiest little chestnut horse one 
could desire, and which Mr. Acre ex- 
plained to Phoebe was her own especial 
property, for her own driving. 

This introduction was not calculated to 
calm the excitement incident to the arrival, 
and it is doubtful if ever before such a 
mad party as the whirling, chattering 
band of girls went through the orderly 
Branscombe streets. 

The Mybogjameeth Club lunched with 
its ‘‘Laurie,’’ and lunched chiefly on won- 
der and admiration of the new-old house, 
for “the big house” had been made so 
beautiful that no one could have recog- 
nized it for the dreary, though dignified 
place that it had been. 

It is difficult to relate all the least details 
of the events of six weeks in one after- 
noon; impossible when five persons are 
talking at once. The four M’s soon dis- 
covered that their Miss Phoebe was pret- 
tier than she had ever been in her life, 
and — ^no, not sweeter, for there is no im- 
proving on perfection — but almost love- 
lier. They also discovered that she was 
changed, grown older, for one thing, and 
[ 166 ] 


Tire Little Women Club 


indefinably different in ways that they 
could not analyze. It was as though, in- 
stead of being a phoebe-bird, she had been 
a little creature slumbering in its chrys- 
alis, and had now burst forth, a beautiful 
butterfly, to take possession of its summer 
kingdom. 

Miss Phoebe wore a button — rather hid- 
ing from sight than courting it — but May’s 
eyes, keen to discover ornaments, spied it 
quickly. 

‘Mt’s just a naval button,” said Miss 
Phoebe carelessly, when May asked about 
it. ‘ ‘ There was a rather nice young sailor 
down there, on leave from his ship — he ’s 
in the navy. He gave me the button to 
have a hat-pin made — there was no jewel- 
er there to do it.” 

‘‘A sailor! In the navy! 0 Miss 
Phoebe!” cried Madge reproachfully, scent- 
ing the possibility of a romance, and hating 
it in advance. 

‘‘Yes; a pleasant young fellow. He 
was kind in teaching me to row,” said 
Miss Phoebe, so lightly that Madge was 
appeased. But Mildred, with keener in- 
sight, noted that she touched the button 
lingeringly, and she was not satisfied. 

[ 167 ] 


The Little Women Club 


*‘Now we want to talk to you about 
the club and the post-office/’ said Molly, 
practical as always. ‘‘We don’t use the 
post-office much — we are sick of it, only we 
hate to admit it. And winter is coming on, 
and we can’t take much comfort with it 
anyway. What do you vote we do with 
it!” 

“Put it away till another spring,” said 
Miss Phoebe promptly. 

‘ ‘ And — and the club 1 ’ ’ hesitatingly sug- 
gested May. 

“Why, you can’t mean that you think' 
of giving up the club!” exclaimed Miss 
Phoebe. “Not play being Meg, Jo, Beth, 
and Amy any more ? ’ ’ 

“We sometimes feel as though it were 
just a little, a very little — ^bothersome,” 
murmured May. 

“It doesn’t seem much like the book, 
and it is n’t quite what I tliought it would 
be,” added Mildred reluctantly. 

“Still, I for one should hate to give 
the club up,” said Miss Phoebe. 

“What ’s that? Give up the club? The 
club of which I am an honorary member, 
and to which I owe my precious grand- 
daughter?” cried Mr. Acre, entering. 

[ 168 ] 


The Little Women Club 


‘‘What a calamity! Besides, you can’t 
give it up just yet, even if you would like 
to. Do you remember that I told Mary 
Margaret Dillon that if she would get bet- 
ter I would bring the club to New York to 
see her? Mary Margaret has done her 
part finely; tlie doctor writes me that she 
has improved faster than he dared to hope 
she would. Now it is for me — for us — to 
fulfill our part of the bargain. How can 
I take the Mybogjameeth Club to New 
York if there is no longer a club to take?” 

‘ ‘ Oh, there will be, there will be ! ” cried 
Madge, bouncing to her feet and seizing 
Mr. Acre around the neck in irrepressible 
raj^ure. “Oh, you dear, dear, dearest 
Grandfather Lawrence ! ’ ’ 

Molly, May, and Mildred joined in the 
chorus, and for a few moments pandemo- 
nium reigned. 

“Am I to understand that you are will- 
ing to go?” asked Mr. Acre, when he could 
make himself heard. 

“Willing! to go to New York!!” cried 
the four girls, unable to express their will- 
ingness otherwise than by exclamation- 
marks. 

“Yes, and stay in a hotel, and go about 

[ 169 ] 


The Little Women Club 


with Phoebe and me sight-seeing till your 
feet ache, and your heads whirl — not that 
you ought not to be used to that!’’ said 
Mr. Acre. 

^^Oh, ohl!” sighed the four M’s, like a 
unanimous meeting of the four winds. 

‘ ‘ Then we shall go next month, when the 
city is bright and gay in its October 
weather, and with the summer people back 
to enliven it,” announced Mr. Acre. ^^But 
I shall feel sorry if I am not to take my 
1‘ttle club, as a club.” 

‘^Oh, we ’ll keep it up !” declared Madge, 
who was the most tired of the game, but 
who now felt that nothing on earth would 
be too much to suffer for Mr. Acre. 

propose a compromise,” said Miss 
Phoebe. ^ ^ Suppose we give up playing 
‘Little Women.’ It was a pleasant play — - 
I liked it very much — but we have carried 
out the story more closely than we expected 
to in finding ‘Grandpa Lawrence’ really 
my grandfather, and perhaps it would be 
wise to give up the dear play that has done 
so much good — to me especially But why 
should we give up the club! Or its nice, 
queer name? We all love Meg, Jo, Beth, 
and Amy, and we all want to be as true 

[ 170 ] 



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The Little Women Club 


little women as they were. Why not keep 
the club, with its name, in their honor, 
and only drop the part of our play which 
consists in calling one another by their 
names? That is the only thing that can 
be burdensome; the rest is all pure plea- 
sure.” 

^^Now, how do you suppose, in all our 
talking it over while you were gone, we 
never once thought of that?” exclaimed 
Mildred with a look of relief. Don’t you 
think that is just a splendid idea, girls?” 

‘ ^ Perfectly fine ! ” ^ ^ Lovely ! ” ‘ ‘ The very 
thing!” responded the other three in their 
usual chorus. 

^^Then we remain the Mybogjameeth 
Club, but from this moment Meg, you are 
Madge Bonner; Jo, you are Mildred 
Houghton; Beth, you are Molly Fuller; 
Amy, you are May Leland. Presto ! 
Change! You are now disenchanted,” cried 
Miss Phoebe, springing to her feet, swing- 
ing her grandfather’s cane over each head, 
and ending with a light tap with it on each 
cheek. ‘‘And ^mu,” she added, swinging 
the cane in like manner around her own 
brown tresses, “you, Theodore Lawrence, 
are Phoebe Acre once more. Hail, new lit- 

[ 173 ] 


The Little Women Club 

tie women, and long live the Mybogjaineeth 
Club.’’ 

‘‘Three cheers for the club, now estab- 
lished for all time,” cried Mr. Acre, en- 
tering into the spirit of the occasion. The 
cheers were given, shrilly, but sincerely. 

Mildred rarely was carried away, like 
the other girls, with wild bursts of fun, but 
this time the excitement of getting back 
Miss Phoebe, the prospect of the coming 
trip to New York, inspired her. Seizing 
the cover of one of Miss Phoebe’s band- 
boxes standing near, she began to beat it, 
holding it high above her head like a tam- 
bourine, while she marched up and down 
the room singing: 

“Oh, ruh-a-dub-dub, 

Th’ Mybogjameeth Club! 

Nothing this club shall sever; 

Meg, Amy, and Beth, 

And Jo, in one breath. 

And we ’ll love one another forever ; 

And Grandpa and Ted 
We ’ll put at the head. 

For they ’re good, and they ’re dear, and 
they ’re clever. ’ ’ 


[ 174 ] 


The Little Women Club 


The club hailed this improvisation with 
delight, and instantly learned the words to 
join in the singing. Out of the house they 
marched, single file, holding one another’s 
skirts, singing at the tops of their voices, 
with Mr. Acre, who was as young as the 
youngest, bringing up the rear, and hum- 
ming the accompaniment in a booming 
bass. 

Under the Norwegian pines, which had 
struck the four M’s as so gloomy when 
they first stole under them, but which now 
suggested only jovial Christmas trees, they 
paused for lack of breath. 

‘‘Here comes the butcher, and big black 
Peter; let’s surprise him,” whispered 
Madge. 

“Hurrah for the Mybogjameeth Club!” 
she shouted at the top of her strong young 
lungs. 

“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! The My- 
bog-ja-meeth ! !” cried the entire club to- 
gether, in approved college fashion. 

And the big Newfoundland was so in- 
telligent that instead of barking he recog- 
nized the festive nature of the occasion, 
and ran, wagging his tail, to the gate, 

[ 175 ] 


The Little Women Club 


where he stood on his hind legs, trying to 
lick the club collectively over the palings. 

For even a dog could see that the Mybog- 
jameeth Club was most lovable. 



[ 176 ] 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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